Oral history interview with Jean E. Howard, 2015

Biographical Note

Jean Howard received her B.A. from Brown in 1970, M.Phil. from University of London (Marshall Fellow 1972), and Ph.D. from Yale (Danforth Fellow 1975). Professor Howard began teaching at Syracuse in 1975, where she received the first University-wide Wasserstrom Prize for excellence as teacher and mentor of graduate students; she has also received Guggenheim, NEH, Mellon, Folger, Huntington, and Newberry Library Fellowships. In 2010 she gave the Columbia University Schoff Memorial Lectures on "Staging History: Imagining the Nation" on playwrights William Shakespeare, Tony Kushner, and Caryl Churchill. Her teaching interests include Shakespeare, Tudor and Stuart drama, Early Modern poetry, modern drama, feminist and Marxist theory, and the history of feminism. Howard is on the editorial board of Shakespeare Studies and Renaissance Drama. She has published essays on Shakespeare, Pope, Ford, Heywood, Dekker, Marston, and Jonson, as well as on aspects of contemporary critical theory including new historicism, Marxism, and issues in feminism. Her books include Shakespeare's Art of Orchestration (1984); Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, edited with Marion O'Connor (1987); The Stage and Struggle in Early Modern England (1994); with Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories (1997); Marxist Shakespeares, edited with Scott Shershow (2000); and four generically organized Companions to Shakespeare, edited with Richard Dutton (2001). She is a co-editor of The Norton Shakespeare and edition, (2007) and General Editor of the Bedford Contextual Editions of Shakespeare. A recent book, Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy 1598-1642 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), won the Barnard Hewitt award for Outstanding Theater History for 2008. She published, with Crystal Bartolovich, a monograph on Shakespeare and Marx in the Great Shakespeareans series for Continuum Press (2012) and in 2015 was completing a book entitled Staging History that uses Shakespeare's history plays as a starting point for considering Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill's use of history in framing debates about current political issues. A book on early modern tragedy is in the works. From 1996 to 1999 Professor Howard directed the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia; in 1999-2000 she was President of the Shakespeare Association of America; from 2004-2007 she served as Columbia's first Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives; and from 2008-2011 she was Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Currently, as a Trustee Emerita of Brown University, she chairs the Brown University President's Diversity Advisory Council and serves on the Advisory Board of the Pembroke Center. She is also a Senator of Phi Beta Kappa.

Scope and Contents

Jean Howard begins this five session interview by discussing her childhood on a farm in northern Maine. Howard recalls her early years as an avid reader, the innate feminism in her family, and her decision to attend Brown University as an undergraduate. Howard talks about her mentor at Brown, Barbara Lewalski, and her time as a Marshall Scholar in London. Howard explains how these years inspired her pursuit of an intellectual study of the theater, and how Lewalski inspired a trend of female mentorship in Howard's life. Howard discusses her experience as a graduate student at Yale University, her years working at Syracuse University, her fight for maternity leave at Syracuse, and how she became a more politicized scholar. Howard then describes her transition to Columbia University and the climate of the English department when she arrived in 1987, including Carolyn Heilbrun's resignation shortly after. She also discusses the experience of female faculty members within the department and the English department's time on receivership. She touches on her position as Columbia's first Vice Provost for Diversity. Howard explains her year away from Columbia and why she returned. She goes on to talk about the creation of the Center for the Study of Social Difference and her students. Howard then discusses the establishment of IRWGS and the role it played in her scholarship. She talks about the formative decisions in the early days of IRWGS. She describes the early curriculum of IRWGS, its relationship to Barnard College, and the courses she co-taught with Martha Howell. She elaborates on the early goals of IRWGS, including an aversion to white feminism and an inclusion of queer studies. She further discusses the intersection between Marxism and feminism, the hiring process of IRWGS, the pursuit of global feminism, IRWGS as both an intellectual and social space, and the plurality of feminisms. She also touches on the origins and influences of her pedagogical style, sexual assault on campus, solidarity with and involvement in campus activism, the Pembroke Center at Brown, the university administration, and New York City. Howard goes on to explain how she was drawn to study the early modern Renaissance period and the theatre. She talks at length about her books The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England, Engendering a Nation, and Theater of a City. She discusses women's representation and presentation in the theatre, as well as analyzing Shakespeare with both Marxist and feminist lenses. Howard addresses her analyses of early modern Renaissance theatre and speaks about her admiration for Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and other contemporary playwrights.

Subjects

• Brown University.
• Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University.
• Clark, Mary Marshall, interviewer.
• College teachers--Interviews.
• Columbia University. Department of English and Comparative Literature.
• Columbia University. Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
• Feminism and higher education--United States.
• Feminist theory.
• Howard, Jean E. (Jean Elizabeth), 1948---Interviews.
• Interviews.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.
• Syracuse University.
• Theater and society--England--History--16th century.
• Theater and society--England--History--17th century.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 2015