Barber, Ethel M., 1914-

Ethel Mabel Barber (née Schoenbaum) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 9 January 1914. She studied music in her youth but majored in mathematics and economics at Milwaukee-Downer College (now merged with Lawrence University), graduating in 1934. During the 1940s, she was an instructional assistant in Northwestern University's Department of Interpretation in the School of Speech (now School of Communication) and concurrently took graduate classes. The first woman to earn a doctorate from the School of Speech, Barber received a Ph.D. in 1947 with a dissertation titled “The analysis for oral interpretation of the dramatic elements in Milton's Paradise Lost .”

Barber began teaching speech courses as a senior at Milwaukee-Downer College and continued to teach at Milwaukee-Downer for four years after graduation. In 1940, she married James Gordon Barber, a judge twenty-one years her senior.

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