Florence Howe

Florence Howe
Born Florence Rosenfeld
March 17, 1929
Brooklyn, New York
Alma mater Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts
Main interests
Feminist author, publisher, literary scholar and historian

Florence Rosenfeld Howe (born March 17, 1929), was an American author, publisher, literary scholar and historian who was considered a leader of the contemporary feminist movement.[1]

Early life

Born in Brooklyn, New York on March 17, 1929,[2] Florence was the daughter of Samuel and Frances Stilly Rosenfeld. Florence loved learning from a young age. Her mother, Frances, a bookkeeper, encouraged her daughter to follow a teaching career.[1]

Education

In 1946, at age 16, Howe entered Hunter College High School. She was one of only five young women from Brooklyn to do so. In 1949, she was awarded entrance to Phi Beta Kappa, the elite academic organization which commends superlative academic achievement. Various people in power encouraged her to take graduate courses in literature and to become a college professor. After receiving a BA in English in 1950 from Hunter College, Howe entered Smith College and earned an MA in English in 1951.[1]

Career

She taught black children in a Mississippi freedom school during 1964 and chaired the Modern Language Association commission on the Status of Women in the Profession. In 1967, she signed a public statement declaring her intention to refuse to pay income taxes in protest against the U.S. war against Vietnam.[3] Howe also founded The Feminist Press in 1970,[4] "an educational nonprofit organization founded to advance women's rights and amplify feminist perspectives",[5] the organization had published three books by 1973.[6]

The Florence Howe Award

The Florence Howe Award for feminist scholarship of the Women's Caucus for the Modern Languages is named in her honor.[7]

Selected bibliography

Books

Chapters in books

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Gale Encyclopedia of Biography: Florence Rosenfeld Howe". biography.yourdictionary.com. The Gale Group. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  2. "Howe, Florence". Library of Congress. Retrieved 9 March 2015. CIP data sheet (b. 3/17/29)
  3. "Newspaper clipping of open letter to the U.S. War Committee, 11 March 1967". Letter to Mr. W. Walter Boyd from Herbert Sonthoff, March 28, 1967 (archive pdf) (Penn State University Libraries: Horowitz Transaction Publishers Archive). 28 March 1967. p. 4. No income tax for war! Now particularly the U.S. war in Vietnam. STATEMENT: Because so much of the tax paid the federal government goes for poisoning food crops, blasting of villages, napalming and killing of thousands upon thousands of people, as in Vietnam at the present time, I am not going to pay taxes on 1966 income.
  4. "Authors: Florence Howe". feministpress.org. The Feminist Press at City University of New York. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  5. "About FP". feministpress.org. The Feminist Press at City University of New York. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  6. Howe, Florence (July 2014). "Lost and found – and what happened next: some reflections on the search for women writers begun by The Feminist Press in 1970". Contemporary Women's Writing, special issue: The Body (Oxford Journals) 8 (2): 136–153. doi:10.1093/cww/vpt022.
  7. Glasgow, Joanne; Ingram, Angela (1990). Courage and tools: the Florence Howe Award for Feminist Scholarship, 1974-1989. New York: Modern Language Association of America. ISBN 9780873523455.

External links

Secondary sources