Dorothy Howard

Dorothy Howard was an American folklorist, public school teacher, principal, and professor at Frostburg State University. Howard was an early proponent of folklore in education and a pioneer in the field of children's folklore. The American Folklore Society's Folklore and Education Prize is named after her.

Personal life Howard was born Dorothy Gray Mills in July 1902, in Texas. She married James Howard in 1925, and the couple had two children. After her retirement, Howard lived in Roswell, New Mexico, from 1969. Eventually, due to failing health, Howard moved to Greenfield, Massachusetts, where she died in 1996 at the age of ninety-three.

Education Howard graduated from North Texas State Teacher's College (now known as the University of North Texas) with a B.S. in education in 1923.

In 1938, Howard earned her doctorate in education from New York University. Her dissertation was titled, “Folk Jingles of American Children: A Collection and Study of Rhymes Used by Children Today.”

Career

Howard began her career as a schoolteacher in 1920 at the age of seventeen when she took over for a fourth grade teacher who died suddenly in a nearby community. Following her graduation from North Texas State Teacher's College in 1923, she worked as a teacher, and eventually principal, in public schools in Texas, New York, and New Jersey until 1944. She spent the next two years, from 1967 until 1969 as a visiting professor of English at the University of Nebraska.

For 10 months in 1954–1955, Howard documented the play of Australian children as part of a postdoctoral Fulbright Fellowship. She was the first person to ever undertake such documentation of Australian children's folklore in a systematic way. Her Australian research collection was eventually donated to Museum Victoria in 2000.

Awards and honors 1954–1955: Fulbright Fellow 1981: American Philosophy Fellowship 1990: Lifetime Achievement Award from the Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society

Works Howard published extensively, including articles for the general public such as a piece in The New Yorker, as well as many book chapters, peer-reviewed articles in journals such as The Journal of American Folklore and Western Folklore, book reviews, poetry, and book-length manuscripts: