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.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Literature,

#1901

Matilda Bruckner

#101267

Overall Influence

Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner is an American scholar of medieval French literature. She is an authority on French romance from the twelfth and thirteenth century, and author and editor of four books on romance, Chrétien de Troyes, and the women troubadours.

#1902

Sarah Corbett

#130042

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Sarah Corbett is a British poet. She graduated with a degree in English and sociology from the University of Leeds in 1992, an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 1998, and a PhD in creative and critical writing from the University of Manchester in 2013. She has published five collections of poetry, including the verse-novel, 'And She Was' and 'A Perfect Mirror' . The Red Wardrobe won an Eric Gregory Award in 1998, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prize. She is a lecturer at Lancaster University, having previously taught for the Open Universi...

#1903

Nora Roberts

#126726

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Nora Roberts is an American author of over 225 romance novels. She writes as J. D. Robb, Jill March and Sarah Hardesty. Roberts was the first author to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. As of 2011, her novels had spent a combined 861 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, including 176 weeks in the number-one spot.

#1904

Sandy Solomon

#130673

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Sandy Solomon is an American poet. Life Solomon was raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She graduated from the University of Chicago. She worked in Washington, DC for the National Urban Coalition and then directed two groups: the National Neighborhood Coalition and the Coalition on Human Needs. She received an MA from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She teaches at Vanderbilt University.

#1905

Kathleen Woodward

Kathleen Woodward

#89057

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Kathleen Woodward is an American academic. She is a Lockwood Professor in Humanities and in English at the University of Washington and has been the Director of the Simpson Center for the Humanities since 2000. Her areas of specialization include 20th-century American literature and culture; discourse of the emotions; technology and science studies; and age studies; digital humanities; and gender, women, and sexuality studies. She is working on risk in the context of globalization and population aging. Her writing talks about the invisibility status of older women and she advocates for an aren...

#1906

Julia Randall

#88429

Overall Influence

1924 - 2005 (81 years)

Julia Randall was an American poet, professor, and environmental activist; recipient of many honors for her poetry, she published seven books of poetry culminating in The Path to Fairview: New and Selected Poems . Described as “one of America's purest and most original lyric poets” , her honors include the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America , the Poets’ Prize for her book Moving in Memory, as well as grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Institute of Arts & Letters , and a Sewanee Review Fellowship .

#1907

Varley O'Connor

#153640

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Varley O'Connor is an American novelist and short story writer. She is an associate professor at Kent State University. Biography Having earned a BFA in acting from Boston University, O’Connor worked for several years as an actress. She enrolled in the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine, graduating with an MFA in 1989.

#1908

Lung Ying-tai

#103531

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Lung Ying-tai is a writer, cultural critic, and public intellectual. With more than 30 books to her credit, she not only has a large number of readers in her native Taiwan, but her works also have an impact in Chinese-language communities in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia, and North America. Lung became widely known for her criticism on the Kuomintang party's martial law regime and has since become a critic of Mainland China's increasing restrictions on press freedom and civil liberties. Her critical essays on cultural and political issues contributed to the democratization of Taiwan.

#1909

Mariko Bando

#101910

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Mariko Bando is a Japanese writer, critic, and former bureaucrat. Bando started her career in the Prime Minister's office, later becoming a consul general and the first director general of the Japanese Cabinet Office's Gender Equality Bureau. Her 2006 book The Dignity of a Woman has sold more than three million copies in Japan. She is currently the president and chancellor of Showa Women's University.

#1910

Pamela L. Caughie

#109783

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Pamela L. Caughie is a professor and graduate program director in the English Department at Loyola University of Chicago. She served as president of the Modernist Studies Association from 2009-2010. Caughie received her PhD from the University of Virginia in 1987. She is also a highly acclaimed Virginia Woolf scholar, and in 2010 was granted a National Endowment for the Humanities grant of $175,000 to continue her work on an electronic edition of Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Through Loyola University of Chicago's digital humanities center Caughie has worked on a digital archive for Lili Elbe, a well-known figure in transgender history.

#1911

Liza Wieland

#114503

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Liza Wieland is an American novelist, short story writer and poet. Wieland has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, and the North Carolina Arts Council, and her work has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. Her novel A Watch of Nightingales won the 2008 Michigan Literary Fiction Award. Wieland earned her B.A. in English from Harvard and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She graduated high school in 1978 from The Lovett School in Atlanta. She has taught at Colorado College and California State University-Fresno, and has been a Professor of English at East Carolina University since 2007.

#1912

Ruby Yayra Goka

#147465

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

Ruby Yayra Goka is a Ghanaian dentist and author. She has 15 books to her credit and is best known for being a multiple Burt Award for African Literature winner in Ghana. Goka, who is an alumnus of the University of Ghana Dental School, currently heads the Dental Department of the Volta Regional Hospital, Ho.

#1913

Dorothea Lasky

#120720

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Dorothea Lasky is an American poet. She is currently an Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts. Background and education She was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1978. She graduated from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in 1996. She earned a BA in classics and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers, and her Ed.M. in Arts & Education from Harvard University, and her Ed.D. in Creativity and Education from the University of Pennsylvania.

#1914

Sandra Doller

#168290

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Sandra Doller is an American poet and writer. Life She attended Amherst College, University of Washington, and University of Chicago. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was awarded the two year Iowa Arts Fellowship.

#1915

Ofelia Rey Castelao

Ofelia Rey Castelao

#57049

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Ofelia Rey Castelao is a Galiciann historian, writer, and university professor. Focusing her research on women's history, she studies female migration and the insertion of Galician women in the literate culture. Rey Castelao was awarded the in 2022.

#1916

Hillary Homzie

#172257

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Hillary Homzie is a lecturer, playwright and author from Charlottesville, Virginia. Early life Homzie was born Denver and raised in Virginia, United States of America. She is the daughter of the late M.J. Homzie.

#1917

Sa'ida Bint Khatir al-Farisi

#169619

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Sa'ida Bint Khatir al-Farisi is an Omani poet. Born in Sur, at the time part of Ash Sharqiyah Region, al-Farisi is a graduate from Kuwait University, from which she received her BA in Arabic and Islamic law in 1976. She also took a degree in education, and has since begun work on a master's degree in the field of Arabic literary criticism. Apart from her literary work she has served as assistant dean of students at Sultan Qaboos University. She has served on the board of the Cultural Club, and worked as editor-in-chief of al-'Umaniya magazine. Her earliest poetry collections date from the 198...

#1918

Judith Frank

#128923

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Judith Frank is an American writer and professor. She has been a two-time Lambda Literary Award nominee, winning in the Lesbian Debut Fiction category at the 17th Lambda Literary Awards in 2005 for her novel Crybaby Butch, and being a shortlisted nominee in the Gay Fiction category at the 27th Lambda Literary Awards in 2015 for All I Love and Know. She is Jewish.

#1919

Leah Naomi Green

#92973

Overall Influence

Leah Naomi Green is an American poet and essayist. She is the author of The More Extravagant Feast, winner of the Walt Whitman award of the Academy of American Poets in 2019. She is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Washington and Lee University.

#1920

Stacy Doris

#113850

Overall Influence

1962 - 2012 (50 years)

Stacy Doris was a poet who wrote in English and French. Doris used the name "Madame Wiener" or «Sa Femme» in some of her French work. Life and work Stacy Doris was an innovative writer who imparted her “ferocity of living and invention” as she created new worlds of relationships with each book. As a teacher, each semester she would offer deep, exploratory seminars in different topics. For Doris, writing, learning, living and romancing were all in the service of one another.

#1921

Jean Kent

#149349

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Jean Kent is an Australian poet. Education Jean Kent was educated at the Glennie Memorial School in Toowoomba and graduated from University of Queensland with Bachelor of Arts majoring in psychology. She has worked in vocational guidance, educational guidance of disabled children, counselling of students and staff in TAFE colleges and, most recently, teaching creative writing. Jean now lives on the New South Wales north coast, which is a feature in her verse, as well the memories and experiences formed in youth and childhood in South East Queensland.

#1922

Paz Battaner

#169753

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

María Paz Battaner Arias is a Spanish philologist and lexicographer. Since 29 January 2017 member of Spanish Royal Academy. She was elected on December 3, 2015, to fill the chair s, vacant since the death in 2013 of José Luis Pinillos Díaz. She has directed and published several dictionaries and carried out numerous works on the didactics of the language. Her main lines of research are lexicology and lexicography, 19th century political language, specialised language and the didactics of the Spanish language.

#1923

Helen Phillips

#159441

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Helen Phillips is an American novelist. She is a winner of the Story Prize. Biography She was born in Colorado. When she was a child, she was affected by alopecia, and by the age of 11, she had lost all of her hair.

#1924

Kim Bridgford

#118767

Overall Influence

1959 - 2020 (61 years)

Kim Suzanne Bridgford was an American poet, writer, critic, and academic. In her poetry, she wrote primarily in traditional forms, particularly sonnets. She was the director of Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference, established in 2014 and first held in May 2015. She directed the West Chester University Poetry Conference from 2010-14.

#1925

Judith P. Hallett

#162890

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Judith P. Hallett is Professor and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Emerita of Classics, having formerly been the Graduate Director at the Department of Classics, University of Maryland. Her research focuses on women, the family, and sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome, particularly in Latin literature. She is also an expert on classical education and reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

#1926

Fernanda Trías

#151093

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Fernanda Trías is a Uruguayan author and translator. Her novels include ‘’La Azotea’’ , ‘’La ciudad invencible’’ , and ‘’Mugre rosa’’ , as well as the short story collection ‘’No soñarás Flores’’ and the chapbook ‘’El regreso’’.

#1927

Emily Critchley

#171646

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Emily Critchley is an experimental writer and academic. She has had poems long listed for the National Poetry Competition and Highly Commended by the Forward Prize for poetry . She was a runner-up in the Pacuare Nature Poetry Competition, Trinidad and Tobago and winner of the national Jane Martin Prize for Poetry , the John Kinsella-Tracy Ryan Prize for Poetry and The Other Prize for best original play . Her work has been translated into several languages.

#1928

Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner

#86873

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (35 years)

Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner is a poet and climate change activist from the Marshall Islands. Early life Jetn̄il-Kijiner was born in the Marshall Islands and raised in Hawaii. Her mother is Hilda Heine, former President of the Marshall Islands. Jetn̄il-Kijiner received her B.A. from Mills College in California and her MA in Pacific Island Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

#1929

Lisa Olstein

#171306

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Lisa Olstein is an American poet and non-fiction writer. Biography Lisa Olstein was born in 1972. She grew up near Boston, Massachusetts. She received a BA from Barnard College and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She undertook additional studies at Harvard Divinity School.

#1930

Erin Cressida Wilson

Erin Cressida Wilson

#105140

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Erin Cressida Wilson is an American playwright, screenwriter, professor, and author. Wilson is known for the 2002 film Secretary, which she adapted from a Mary Gaitskill short story. It won her the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay and holds a rating of 75% on Rotten Tomatoes. She also wrote the screenplays for the 2006 film Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, starring Nicole Kidman; for the 2009 erotic thriller Chloe, directed by Atom Egoyan ; for the 2014 drama Men, Women & Children, co-written with its director Jason Reitman ; and the 2016 mystery thriller The Girl on the Train, from the Paula Hawkins novel of the same name.

#1931

Lauren Anderson

#61923

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Lauren Anderson is an American ballet dancer and a former principal dancer with the Houston Ballet. In 1990, she was one of the first African-American ballerinas to become a principal for a major dance company, an important milestone in American ballet. She appeared in many ballets such as Don Quixote, Cleopatra, and The Nutcracker. She retired from the Houston Ballet in 2006 and retired from dance altogether in 2009. In 2016, Anderson had her pointe shoes from her final performance placed in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

#1932

La Vinia Delois Jennings

#106710

Overall Influence

La Vinia Delois Jennings is an American literary scholar and critic of twentieth-century American literature and culture, currently a Distinguished Humanities Professor at the University of Tennessee, and also formerly a Lindsay Young Professor and a 1998 Fulbright Senior Lecturer appointed to the University of Málaga in Spain.

#1933

Roberta Hodes

#70366

Overall Influence

1927 - 2021 (94 years)

Roberta Olivia Hodes was an American writer, director, producer, and script supervisor who was active from the 1950s through the 1980s. Biography After graduating from Vassar College, she took acting classes in New York City alongside people like Rod Serling, Harry Belafonte, and Rod Steiger. She then spent time in Israel, where she got her first taste of the film industry working on a documentary.

#1934

Carol Colatrella

#165409

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Dr. Carol Colatrella is a two-time Fulbright scholar and an award-winning teacher who is active in programmatic and administrative roles both on the Georgia Tech campus and externally. She is a Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and Associate Dean in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

#1935

Jody Gladding

#109949

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Jody Gladding is an American translator and poet. She was selected by James Dickey for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Life She graduated from Franklin & Marshall College, and Cornell University. Gladding, who also teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College, is the author of four books of poetry, one of which is a letterpress edition and one of which is a chapbook. She also has been involved in two performance/installations in collaboration with fellow poet and friend Suzanne Heyd. She has received numerous prizes, fellowships and awards for both her poetry and her translatio...

#1936

Sarah McFarland Taylor

#69007

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Sarah McFarland Taylor is an American academic and author. She is currently Associate Professor of Religion in the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern University, where she also teaches in the Environmental Policy and Culture Program and in American Studies. Areas of research focus include studies of media, religion, and culture; public moral engagement in environmental issues; and consumerism, marketing, and popular culture. She holds a Bachelor's degree from Brown University, a Master's degree from Dartmouth College, and a doctorate in Religion and American Culture from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

#1937

Yun Wang

#84972

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Yun Wang is a poet and cosmologist. She is originally from Gaoping, a small town near Zunyi, in Guizhou Province, China. Professional work in astrophysics Yun Wang received a bachelor's degree in physics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, after which she came to the United States and obtained her master's and doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University. A senior research scientist at California Institute of Technology since 2015, and a professor in the University of Oklahoma's department of physics and astronomy until 2017, she has published over 100 refereed papers, most recently special...

#1938

Laurie Lamon

#143416

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Laurie Lamon is an American poet. Education Lamon earned her bachelor's degree from Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, her master's in fine arts from the University of Montana, and her doctorate in English literature from the University of Utah in 1988.

#1939

Taije Silverman

#122491

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Taije Silverman is an American poet, translator, and professor. She currently teaches at the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. Biography Taije Silverman was born in San Francisco, California . Her father was a real estate developer and architect and her mother an art teacher. She has lived in different cities in the United States including Houston, Berkeley, Atlanta, New York, D.C., Ithaca, Princeton, and Charlottesville. She is a 1996 graduate of Vassar College.

#1940

Susan Daitch

#87698

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Susan Daitch is an American novelist and short story writer. In 1996 David Foster Wallace called her "one of the most intelligent and attentive writers at work in the U.S. today." Biography Susan Daitch graduated from Barnard College and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

#1941

Guadalupe Santa Cruz

#167813

Overall Influence

1952 - 2015 (63 years)

Guadalupe Santa Cruz , also known as Lupe Santa Cruz, was a Chilean writer, philosopher, visual artist and translator. She is considered one of the most energetic and varied protagonists of a generation of writers that emerged after the period of the 1973 Coup d'État in Chile. Author of numerous books, including Plasma, with which she received two important prizes in Chile: the Premio Novela Inédita Consejo Nacional del Libro y la Lectura and the Premio atenea. Also, in 2004, Plasma received the prize of the Book Council as a novel in the unpublished category. In addition, at the international...

#1942

Paula Martinac

#152365

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Paula Martinac is an American writer. She is most noted for her novel Out of Time, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction at the 3rd Lambda Literary Awards in 1991. The novel was also a finalist for the ALA Gay and Lesbian Book Award.

#1943

Rose Ghorayeb

#91968

Overall Influence

1909 - 2006 (97 years)

Rose Ghorayeb was a Lebanese writer, author, literary critic, and feminist. She was a professor of Arabic literature at the Lebanese American University and was frequently referred to as the "first female critic in Arabic literature". Regarded as a pioneer in aesthetic criticism, her literary career spanned more than 70 years and included many children stories, articles, biographies and plays.

#1944

Elise Blackwell

#98867

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Elise Blackwell is an American novelist and writer. She is the author of five novels, as well as numerous short stories and essays. Her books have been translated into five languages, adapted for the stage, and served as the inspiration for the song "When the War Came" by The Decemberists. She is host and organizer of the literary series The Open Book at the University of South Carolina, where she also teaches. In 2019, she was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.

#1945

Tracey Slaughter

#155804

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Tracey Slaughter is a New Zealand writer and poet. Life Slaughter was born in Papatoetoe, South Auckland, and lived there until she was 10 years old, when her family moved to the Coromandel Peninsula. She studied at the University of Auckland, graduating with a Ph.D in 2002. The title of her PhD thesis was Her face looking back at me: reflections on New Zealand women's autobiography. Slaughter has tutored in English at Massey University and the University of Auckland, and is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Waikato.

#1946

Marjeta Šašel Kos

#174007

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Marjeta Šašel Kos is a Slovene archaeologist and classical philologist. Biography Marjeta Šašel Kos was born on 20 April 1954. In 1980, she earned a master's degree in archaeology from the University of Ljubljana, and in 1989 a PhD in classical philology from the same university.

#1947

Zohar Shavit

#88137

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Zohar Shavit is an Israeli professor at Tel Aviv University’s School for Cultural Studies. Biography Zohar Dror was born in Tel Aviv. She studied at Tel Aviv University, where she wrote her PhD theses under the supervision of Itamar Even-Zohar in the direct course of studies for outstanding students. In 1997, she became a full professor of culture research at Tel Aviv University.

#1948

Sharon Solwitz

#175471

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Sharon Solwitz is a fiction writer and professor based in Chicago, Illinois. She is the author of the short story collection Blood and Milk and the novels Bloody Mary and Once, in Lourdes. Tom Perotta and Heidi Pitlor selected her story "Alive" for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2012, and her story "Gifted" was chosen for the 2016 collection. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1991, and teaches creative writing at Purdue University.

#1949

Jean Walton

#140038

Overall Influence

1914 - 2006 (92 years)

Jean Brosius Walton was an American academic administrator and women's studies scholar. She spent the bulk of her career at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Born to a Pennsylvania Quaker family, Walton grew up at George School and studied mathematics at Swarthmore College, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. She joined Pomona College in 1949 as the Dean of Women, and was promoted to dean of students in 1969 and vice president for student affairs in 1976, three years before her formal retirement. During her tenure, she advocated for women's education, engaged with stud...

#1950

Jennifer Militello

Jennifer Militello

#130165

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Jennifer Militello is an American poet and professor. She is author of the award-winning memoir Knock Wood which appeared from Dzanc Books in 2019, and five collections of poetry including The Pact, Tupelo Press, 2021. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Flinch of Song, was published in 2009 by Tupelo Press, and won the Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Prize. Her second collection, Body Thesaurus, was named a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award by Marilyn Hacker in 2010. Her third book A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions