Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

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To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Literature,

#1401

Barnita Bagchi

#69128

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Barnita Bagchi is a Bengali-speaking Indian feminist advocate, historian, and literary scholar. She is a faculty member in literary studies at Utrecht University, and was previously at the Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata at the University of Calcutta. She was educated at Jadavpur University, in Kolkata, St Hilda's College, Oxford, and at the Trinity College, Cambridge.

#1402

Laynie Browne

#104449

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Laynie Browne is an American poet. Her work explores notions of silence and the invisible, through the re-contextualization of poetic forms, such as sonnets , tales , letters , psalms and others. Life Laynie Browne received her M.F.A. from Brown University in 1990. She was a member of the Subtext collective, Seattle, and The Ear Inn in New York City.

#1403

Elizabeth Arnold

Elizabeth Arnold

#93479

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Elizabeth Arnold is an American poet. She graduated from University of Chicago, with a PhD. She teaches at the University of Maryland. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, Antioch Review, Chicago Review, Sagetrieb, Literary Imagination, Gulf Coast, The Carolina Review, Tikkun, Pequod, Smartish Pace, Poetry Daily, Kalliope, and Shankpain.

#1404

Karen J. Greenberg

Karen J. Greenberg

#45045

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Karen Joy Greenberg is an American historian, professor, and author. She is Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law. Life and career Greenberg earned a B.A. in history from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.

#1405

Bahira Abdulatif

Bahira Abdulatif

#102889

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Bahira Abdulatif Yasin is an Iraqi writer, translator and professor living in Madrid. She's an associate professor at Autonomous University of Madrid's Arabic and Islamic Studies department. An expert in Spanish philology, Abdulatif has also served in the Faculty of Languages at the University of Baghdad. She came to Madrid after United Nations imposed Sanctions against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. She has also taught at Complutense University of Madrid, University of Salamanca and written fictional works in Arabic.

#1406

Ruth Vanita

#75393

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Ruth Vanita is an Indian academic, activist and author who specialises in British and Indian literary history with a focus on gender and sexuality studies. She also teaches and writes on Hindu philosophy.

#1407

Virginia Hamilton Adair

#66610

Overall Influence

1913 - 2004 (91 years)

Virginia Hamilton Adair was an American poet who became famous later in life with the 1996 publication of Ants on the Melon. Background Mary Virginia Hamilton was born in the Bronx and raised in Montclair, New Jersey. She attended Montclair Kimberley Academy, graduating in the class of 1929. She disliked the name "Mary" and dropped it as a young adult. Adair composed her first poem at the age of two; after that, she wrote over a thousand poems. Exposed to poetry as a young child through her father, she began writing her own poems regularly at age six. More than seventy were published in journ...

#1408

Marilyn Sides

#96316

Overall Influence

Marilyn Sides is an American writer and a senior lecturer in the English Department of Wellesley College, Massachusetts where she teaches creative writing and literature courses. Her collection of short stories, The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife and Other Tales , was published in 1996. The title story was selected to appear in the 1990 O. Henry Prize Stories collection and inspired the 2001 British-Dutch feature film The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife by Michie Gleason. Her first novel, The Genius of Affection , appeared in 1999.

#1409

Mary Morrissy

#114120

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Mary Morrissy is an Irish novelist and short story writer. She writes on art, fiction, and history. Morrissy is an elected member of Aosdána, Ireland's academy of artists and writers. Life Morrissy was born in Dublin. A graduate of Rathmines College and Technological University Dublin, she has taught creative writing in Ireland and the United States of America, notably in University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, University of Iowa, and University College Cork. Morrissy trained as a journalist and has worked as a reporter/feature writer/sub-editor on three of Ireland's national dailies.

#1410

Guadalupe Grande

#75478

Overall Influence

1965 - 2021 (56 years)

Guadalupe Grande Aguirre was a Spanish poet. She had a degree in social anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid. Biography Guadalupe was the daughter of writer Félix Grande and was a cousin of poet Carlos Martínez Aguirre. A literary critic and teacher, she wrote El libro de Lilit in 1995, La llave de la niebla in 2003, and Mapas de cera in 2006.

#1411

Iris M. Zavala

#101839

Overall Influence

1936 - 2020 (84 years)

Iris M. Zavala was a Puerto Rican author, scholar, and poet, who later lived in Barcelona, Spain. She had over 50 works to her name, plus hundreds of articles, dissertations, and conferences and many of her writings, including "Nocturna, mas no funesta", build on and express this belief.

#1412

Helen Cross

#92192

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Helen Cross is an English author. Biography She was raised in the East Riding of Yorkshire and educated at Goldsmiths, University of London and the University of East Anglia . Cross's first novel, My Summer of Love, was published in 2001 and was the winner of a Betty Trask Award in 2002. It was made into an acclaimed film directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and starring Emily Blunt and Natalie Press. She also wrote The Secrets She Keeps, published in 2005. These two books are set in Yorkshire. Her third and latest novel, Spilt Milk, Black Coffee, was published in 2009..

#1413

Ann duCille

#89422

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Ann duCille is Professor of English, Emerita at Wesleyan University who is a scholar of African-American literature, cultural studies, and Black feminist theory. Born in Brooklyn, New York, duCille earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bridgewater State College and then a Master's degree and PhD in English from Brown University.

#1414

Martha Collins

#72832

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Martha Collins is a poet, translator, and editor. She has published eleven books of poetry, including Casualty Reports , Because What Else Could I Do , Night Unto Night , Admit One: An American Scrapbook , Day Unto Day , White Papers , and Blue Front , as well as two chapbooks and four books of co-translations from the Vietnamese. She has also co-edited, with Kevin Prufer and Martin Rock, a volume of poems by Catherine Breese Davis, accompanied by essays and an interview about the poet’s life and work.

#1415

Helen Lovatt

#119699

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Helen V. Lovatt is Professor of Classics at the University of Nottingham. She is known in particular for her work on Latin epic literature especially from the Flavian period. Career Lovatt studied at Millfield and then read Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where she was awarded her PhD in 2000 with a dissertation on Games and realities in Statius, 'Thebaid 6'. Lovatt lectured at Keele University before moving to a Junior Research Fellowship at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. In 2003 Lovatt joined the department of Classics at the University of Nottingham. Lovatt delivered her inaugu...

#1416

Tara Welch

#109275

Overall Influence

Tara Welch is an American professor of classics at the University of Kansas. She has published two books, The Elegiac Cityscape: Propertius and the Meaning of Roman Monuments and Tarpeia: Workings of a Roman Myth . She was a co-editor for the work Oxford Readings in Propertius with Ellen Greene.

#1417

Maureen N. McLane

#110570

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Maureen McLane is an American poet, critic, and professor. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Life McLane was raised in upstate New York. She holds degrees from Harvard University, University of Oxford , and University of Chicago. She is the author of four books of poetry, including This Blue. My Poets , a hybrid of memoir and criticism, was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. McLane is also a contributing editor at Boston Review and poetry editor at Grey. She is currently professor of English at New York University.

#1418

Agate Nesaule

#107678

Overall Influence

1938 - 2022 (84 years)

Agate Nesaule was a Latvian-born American writer and professor of English on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. Her 1995 memoir A Woman in Amber won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1996.

#1419

Laura Moriarty

#89784

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Laura Moriarty is an American novelist. Early life and education Moriarty was born in Honolulu in 1970. She earned a degree in social work before earning an M.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Kansas. She was the recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

#1420

Adrian Blevins

#78201

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Adrian Blevins is an American poet. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including Appalachians Run Amok, winner of the 2016 Wilder Prize . Her other full-length poetry collections are Status Pending , Live from the Homesick Jamboree and The Brass Girl Brouhaha . With Karen McElmurray, Blevins co-edited Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean: Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia , a collection of essays of new and emerging Appalachian poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers. Her chapbooks are Bloodline and The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes, which won the first of Bright Hill Press's chapbook contests.

#1421

Margarita Engle

Margarita Engle

#109606

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Margarita Engle is a Cuban American poet and author of many award-winning books for children, young adults and adults. Most of Engle's stories are written in verse and are a reflection of her Cuban heritage and her deep appreciation and knowledge of nature. She became the first Latino awarded a Newbery Honor in 2009 for The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom. She was selected by the Poetry Foundation to serve from 2017 to 2019 as the sixth Young People's Poet Laureate. On October 9, 2018, Margarita Engle was announced the winner of the 2019 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature.

#1422

Helen F. North

#122930

Overall Influence

1921 - 2012 (91 years)

Helen F. North was an American classical scholar and an expert on Greek and Roman literature. Early life and education North was the daughter of James H. and Catherine North. A native of Utica, she was educated at Cornell University, where she studied Classics, gaining a Bachelor's degree in 1942, a Master's in 1943 and a doctorate in 1945.

#1423

Sharona Ben-Tov Muir

#68044

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Sharona Muir is an American writer and academic. Early life She is the daughter of the late Israeli-American inventor and author, Itzhak Bentov who died as a passenger on American Airlines Flight 191 in 1979.

#1424

Carole Morin

#109326

Overall Influence

Carole Morin is a Glasgow-born novelist who lives in Soho, London. She has had five novels published: Lampshades, Penniless in Park Lane, Dead Glamorous, Spying on Strange Men and Fleshworld. Morin's fiction is critically acclaimed and has been described as 'Sylvia Plath with a sense of humour' and 'A Scottish nihilistic Catcher in the Rye'.

#1425

Tracy Ryan

#57116

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Tracy Ryan is an Australian poet and novelist. She has also worked as an editor, publisher, translator, and academic. Life Tracy Ryan was born in Western Australia, where she grew up as part of a large family. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from Curtin University and studied European languages at the University of Western Australia; her PhD was also from that university.

#1426

Jill Jones

#98914

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jill Jones is a poet and writer from Sydney, Australia. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide. Career In 1993 Jones won the Mary Gilmore Prize for her first book of poetry, The Mask and the Jagged Star . Her third book, The Book of Possibilities , was published in 1997. It was shortlisted for the National Book Council 'Banjo' Awards and the Adelaide Festival Awards.

#1427

Emma Smith

#81748

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

Emma Smith was an English novelist, who also wrote for children and published two volumes of autobiography. She gave encouragement to Laurie Lee while he was writing his bestselling memoir of his childhood, Cider with Rosie.

#1428

Sarah Holland-Batt

#80672

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

Sarah Holland-Batt is a contemporary Australian poet, critic, and academic. Early life and education Born in Southport, Queensland, Sarah Holland-Batt grew up in Australia and Denver, Colorado. She was educated at the University of Queensland, where she received First Class Honours in Literary Studies, an MPhil and PhD, and at New York University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar and attained an M.F.A.

#1429

Iryna Yevsa

#139756

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Iryna Oleksandrivna Yevsa is a Russian-language Ukrainian poet and translator. She lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Biography Yevsa was born into a military family in Kharkiv, Ukraine SSR. She studied in the philological faculty at the National University of Kharkiv and graduated from Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow in 1981. Following her graduation, she worked at the Book Chamber of Ukraine from 1981-1986 and began working for the company Apis in 1988. She has recently worked for the National University of Kharkiv.

#1430

Amryl Johnson

#125578

Overall Influence

1944 - 2001 (57 years)

Amryl Johnson was a writer born in Trinidad who lived most of her life in Britain. Life Johnson was born in Tunapuna, Trinidad, and was brought up by her grandparents until the age of 11, when she moved to Britain to join her parents. She attended secondary school in London and went on to study British, African and Caribbean literature at the University of Kent. Much of her work concerned the diasporic nature of her life and the hostility she faced in Britain. For a time, she taught at the University of Warwick but generally supported herself by writing and performing. During the late 1980s, ...

#1431

Che Husna Azhari

#81537

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

The surname is Ches Husna; the given name is Azhari.Che Husna Azhari in Kota Bharu, Melor, Kelantan, is a Malaysian writer of literature. Biography Che Husna received a degree from Tunku Kurshiah College, Seremban in 1973, and her A Levels from Oxford College of Further Education in 1975.

#1432

Audrey Bilger

#86027

Overall Influence

Audrey Bilger is the 16th and current president of Reed College. She is former vice president and dean of the college at Pomona College and previously was a professor of literature and faculty director of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College.

#1433

Danielle Dutton

#102622

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Danielle Dutton is an American writer and publisher. Early life and education Dutton was born in Visalia, California, on October 18, 1975. She received her B.A. in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1997, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Denver. During her time at DU, she served as the Associate Editor of the Denver Quarterly, under editor Bin Ramke. For several years she taught courses in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. In 2011 she joined the MFA program in creative writing at Washington University in St.

#1434

Mirta Arlt

#115524

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

Electra Mirta Arlt was an Argentine writer, translator, professor and researcher specializing in theater. She was the daughter of the writer, Roberto Arlt. Early life and education Mirta Arlt was born in Córdoba, the daughter of Roberto Arlt and Carmen Antinucci. She married twice, first at the age of 15, and again at the age of 18. She completed her studies at National University of Córdoba in 1949, becoming a Professor of Language and Literature.

#1435

Patricia Santana

#131757

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Patricia Santana is a Latina American novelist. Life She is the eighth of nine children of Mexican immigrants. Her parents are from El Grullo, Jalisco. She graduated from University of California, San Diego, and from the University of California, Los Angeles with a master's degree in Comparative Literature.

#1436

Ellen Bass

#76349

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Ellen Bass is an American poet and author. She has won three Pushcart Prizes and a Lambda Literary Award for her 2002 book Mules of Love. She co-authored the 1991 child sexual abuse book The Courage to Heal. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2014 and was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2017. Bass has taught poetry at Pacific University and founded poetry programs for prison inmates.

#1437

Gabeba Baderoon

Gabeba Baderoon

#67970

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Gabeba Baderoon is a South African poet and academic. She is the 2005 recipient of the Daimler Chrysler Award for South African Poetry. She lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa, and Pennsylvania, US, and serves as an assistant professor of Women's Studies and African and African American Studies at Penn State.

#1438

Audrey Thomas

#93022

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Audrey Grace Thomas, OC is a Canadian novelist and short story writer who lives on Galiano Island, British Columbia. Her stories often have feminist themes and include exotic settings. She is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award.

#1439

Lydia Wevers

#97904

Overall Influence

1950 - 2021 (71 years)

Lydia Joyce Wevers was a New Zealand literary historian, literary critic, editor, and book reviewer. She was an academic at Victoria University of Wellington for many years, including acting as director of the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies from 2001 to 2017. Her academic research focussed on New Zealand literature and print culture, as well as Australian literature. She wrote three books, Country of Writing: Travel Writing About New Zealand 1809–1900 , On Reading and Reading on the Farm: Victorian Fiction and the Colonial World , and edited a number of anthologies.

#1440

Thalia Field

#89120

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Thalia Field is an American author known for innovative fiction and interdisciplinary literature. She teaches experimental fiction and interdisciplinary performance at Brown University, where she also serves as Faculty Director of the Brown Arts Institute.

#1441

Mary Szybist

#96205

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Mary Szybist is an American poet. She won the National Book Award for Poetry for her collection Incarnadine. Life She grew up in Pennsylvania, earned her B.A. and M.T. from the University of Virginia, and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow.

#1442

Sheryl St. Germain

#91793

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Sheryl St. Germain is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She is of Cajun and Creole descent. Her father was Jules St. Francois St. Germain and her mother Myrl Marie Frank. Born and raised in south Louisiana, much of her work deals with the culture and environment of Louisiana. Currently, she directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has also taught at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, 1991–94; Knox College, 1994–98; and Iowa State University, 1998-2005.

#1443

Sonia Johnson

#16410

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Sonia Ann Johnson, is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and in the late 1970s was publicly critical of the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , of which she was a member, against the proposed amendment. She was eventually excommunicated from the church for her activities. She went on to publish several radical feminist books, ran for president in 1984, and become a popular feminist speaker.

#1444

Doireann MacDermott

#53691

Overall Influence

1923 - Present (101 years)

Doireann MacDermott is an Irish translator, writer, an academic in the field of Spanish philology, and a retired professor of English studies at the University of Barcelona. She pioneered the study of the language and literature of the English-speaking countries of the former Commonwealth.

#1445

Jennifer duBois

Jennifer duBois

#96696

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Jennifer duBois is an American novelist. duBois is a recipient of a Whiting Award and has been named a "5 Under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. Life and Work duBois is a graduate of Tufts University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. From 2009 to 2011, she was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

#1446

Margaret Hubbard

#88801

Overall Influence

1924 - 2011 (87 years)

Margaret Hubbard was an Australian-born British classical scholar specialising in philology. Career Hubbard excelled during her school career at Adelaide High School, which she attended on receipt of a Government bursary won in 1938. Upon graduating from high school she won the Tennyson medal for the top place in the leaving examinations, and Annie Montgomerie Martin prize for coming top in modern history. She then studied for an undergraduate degree at the University of Adelaide, reading Latin, English and Greek there,. She was then awarded a scholarship to attend Somerville College, Oxford ...

#1447

Laura Maria Censabella

#116999

Overall Influence

Laura Maria Censabella is an American playwright and screenwriter. She has been awarded three grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts; two in playwriting for Abandoned in Queens and Three Italian Women, and The Geri Ashur Award in Screenwriting for her original screenplay Truly Mary. She is the Director of The Playwrights Unit of the Ensemble Studio Theatre

#1448

Pauline Uwakweh

#87400

Overall Influence

Pauline Ada Uwakweh is a Nigerian writer and academic. Writing as Pauline Onwubiko, she published Running for Cover , a children's novel giving a child's-eye view of the Nigerian civil war. She is an Associate Professor of English in the English Department at North Carolina A&T State University. Her specialism is African writing and literature from the African diaspora, particularly women's writing.

#1449

Gabriela Aguileta

Gabriela Aguileta

#90433

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Gabriela Aguileta Estrada is a Mexican writer of children's books and short stories. Born in Mexico City, she studied biology at the Faculty of Sciences of the UNAM in Mexico and in 2004 earned a doctorate in genetics from University College London . As scientist and writer she has studied, worked and lived in Israel, Canada, England, Sweden, France, Spain and Switzerland. She was on the editorial board of the children's literary magazine La sonrisa del gato and in 2004 she was awarded a writer's fellowship from the National Foundation for Mexican Literature . She has also authored three popular science books which allowed her to promote interest in science among children and young adults.

#1450

Achy Obejas

#87758

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Achy Obejas is a Cuban-American writer and translator focused on personal and national identity issues, living in Benicia, California. She frequently writes on her sexuality and nationality, and has received numerous awards for her creative work. Obejas' stories and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Fifth Wednesday Journal, TriQuarterly, Another Chicago Magazine and many other publications. Some of her work was originally published in Esto no tiene nombre, a Latina lesbian magazine published and edited by tatiana de la tierra, which gave voice to the Latina lesbian community. Obejas worked as a journalist in Chicago for more than two decades.

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