Jean Elizabeth Howard (born October 20, 1948, in Houlton, Maine) is an American professor in English studies and a Shakespeare scholar.
In 2010 she held the Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lecture on Staging History; Imagining the Nation at Columbia University, where she is the George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities.
Her research interests are mainly focus on Shakespeare, early-modern poetry and drama, as well as Feminist and Marxist theory.
From 2004 to 2007 she was Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives, and from 2008 to 2011 Head of the Department of English Language and Comparative Literary Studies.
She is also a consultant at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and one of the senators of Phi Beta Kappa.