Jean E. Howard is the George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, USA. Author of Shakespeare's Art of Orchestration, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England, Engendering a Nation (with Phyllis Rackin, 1994) and Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy (2001), she has edited six collections of essays, including the four-volume Companion to Shakespeare's Works (2003). General Editor of the Bedford contextual editions of Shakespeare, Howard is Past President of the Shakespeare Association of America. She has received numerous fellowships and awards including Guggenheim, ACLS, NEH, Folger, Huntington, and Newberry Library Fellowships. At Syracuse University she received the Wasserstrom Prize for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and at Columbia University the University Graduate Mentoring Award.