Louise Rosenblatt

Louise Michelle Rosenblatt (23 August 1904 in Atlantic City, New Jersey – 8 February 2005 in Arlington, Virginia) was an American university professor.

[2] While Rosenblatt initially planned to travel to Samoa after graduation in order to do field research, she decided instead to continue her studies in France.

In Paris, she met French author André Gide and American expatriates Gertrude Stein and Robert Penn Warren.

Subsequently, she held visiting professorships at Rutgers and the University of Miami, along with a number of other short term appointments, although she maintained residence at her long-term home in Princeton, New Jersey.

Carrying on a tradition from her family championing the "underdog," her editorials in the Barnard Bulletin spoke to her concern for building democratic institutions.

When Rosenblatt began teaching English Literature at Barnard, she developed an intense interest in each reader's unique response to a given text.

Her views regarding literacy were influenced by John Dewey,[3] who was in the philosophy department at Columbia in the 1930s, as well as Charles Sanders Peirce and William James.

A written work (often referred to as a "poem" in her writing) does not have the same meaning for everyone, as each reader brings individual background knowledge, beliefs, and context into the reading act.

In contrast, if a reader approaches a text seeking to enjoy its formal characteristics—its rhythms, its word choices, its images, its connotations—then that person is reading "aesthetically."

Rosenblatt made her final public appearance in Indianapolis in November 2004 at age 100, speaking to a standing-room-only session of a convention of English teachers.