Howe was born in Princeton, New Jersey, on February 17, 1953, a child of academic parents: his father, Irving Howe (1920–1993), was a celebrated literary critic, historian of Jewish immigrants to America and a prominent American socialist; his mother, Thalia Phillies, was a classicist and academic.
[1][2] Howe's Migration and Mythmaking, first published in 1989 and reprinted in 2001, was a study of Anglo-Saxon culture and literature.
Howe argued that the Anglo-Saxons, descendants of peoples who had traveled from continental Europe to settle Britain and then returned to Europe to convert their pagan forebears (Howe discusses Wilfrid, Saint Willibrord, and Saint Boniface, in connection with such poems as Beowulf and Exodus), were very conscious of their return to Europe and saw themselves as an integral part of and parallel to "the Israelite and Hebrew migration in biblical history".
[3] In addition to his scholarship of Old English (and he was fond of discussing and publishing on parallels between Old English and modern culture and literature), Howe had an interest in geography and in American landscape and culture (including "theme parks, fast-food America, and construction cranes"), and published a number of (academic) articles in that field.
[1] Howe held a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002–2003) and was elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2005.