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).

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List of the most influential people in Literature,

#5201

Sam Witt

#123113

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Sam Witt is an American poet and tenured English professor who currently lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. Life Born in 1970 in Wimbledon, England. He studied as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia and went on to receive his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Everlasting Quail was published in 2010 by the University Press of New England. Witt went on to spend a year in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar to work on his second book. Witt has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Iowa, the New England Institute of Art, Saint Petersburg State University, ...

#5202

Bernice Zamora

#118066

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Bernice B. Ortiz Zamora is a Chicana poet, "one of the preeminent poets to emerge from the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s". She received a B.A. in English and French from Southern Colorado State College and an M.A. in English from Colorado State University in Fort Collins in 1972. In 1972, she enrolled in the English doctoral program at Marquette University and transferred to Stanford University the following year, where she ultimately received her Ph.D. in 1976. Besides being an accomplished poet, Zamora also taught classes in ethnic studies, Chicano studies, and literature at Santa Clara University, Stanford University, University of California, and University of San Francisco.

#5203

Paul Gruchow

#115662

Overall Influence

1947 - 2004 (57 years)

Paul Gruchow was an American author, editor, and conservationist from Montevideo, Minnesota. A student of poet John Berryman, he is well known for his strong support of rural communities, as expressed in his first book, "Journal of a Prairie Year" published by University of Minnesota Press. His essays in Grass Roots: The Universe of Home, document his ideas with stories of growing up in rural Chippewa County Minnesota.

#5204

Choe Inhun

#125793

Overall Influence

1936 - 2018 (82 years)

Choi In-hoon was a South Korean novelist and professor of creative writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts from 1977 to 2001. He is well-known for his 1960 novel The Square, which depicts "the troubled life of a Korean prisoner of war who ends up taking his own life amid an intensified ideological rift in the post-Korean War era." He won the 2011 Park Kyong-ni Prize.

#5205

Bill Jay

#68888

Overall Influence

1940 - 2009 (69 years)

William Jay was a photographer, writer on and advocate of photography, curator, magazine and picture editor, lecturer, public speaker and mentor. He was the first editor of "the immensely influential magazine" Creative Camera ; and founder and editor of Album . He is the author of more than 20 books on the history and criticism of photography, and roughly 400 essays, lectures and articles. His own photographs have been widely published, including a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is known for his portrait photographs of photographers.

#5206

Peter Stone

#97035

Overall Influence

1930 - 2003 (73 years)

Peter Hess Stone was an American screenwriter and playwright. Stone is perhaps best remembered by the general public for the screenplays he wrote or co-wrote in the mid-1960s, Charade , Father Goose , and Mirage .

#5207

Vivien Noakes

#99292

Overall Influence

1937 - 2011 (74 years)

Vivien Noakes was a British biographer, editor and critic, an expert on Edward Lear and the literature of the First World War. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Early life and education She was born Vivien Mary Langley, daughter of aeronautical engineer Marcus Langley and educated at Dunottar School, leaving with A-levels. It was not until later in life that she took her degree at Manchester College, Oxford, and Somerville College, Oxford, where she was subsequently lecturer.

#5208

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

#129953

Overall Influence

Kali Fajardo-Anstine is an American novelist and short story writer from Denver, Colorado. Her short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, The American Scholar, and the Boston Review. In 2020, she was the American Book Award winner for Sabrina & Corina: Stories. Her first novel, Woman of Light: A Novel , is a national bestseller and won the 2023 WILLA Literary Award in Historical Fiction.

#5209

Andrew Feld

#155458

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Andrew Feld is an American poet. Life He graduated from the University of Houston, with an MFA. Currently, he teaches at University of Washington, and is the editor of The Seattle Review. His work has appeared in AGNI, The Nation, New England Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, Triquarterly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Yale Review. Feld currently lives in Seattle, Washington.

#5210

Shi Shuqing

#39688

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Shi Shuqing is a Taiwan-Chinese writer and educator. She was born in Lukang, Changhua and is the sister of writer Li Ang. Shi was educated at Tamkang University and City University of New York. She taught at Taipei's National Chengchi University. In 1978, Shi moved to Hong Kong where she became director of Asian programs at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, later working as a consultant there. She returned to Taiwan in 1997.

#5211

R.L. Peteni

#103901

Overall Influence

1915 - 2000 (85 years)

Randell Langa Peteni was a Xhosa South African novelist and academic, and author of the novel Hill of Fools , which was adapted for television by the SABC. The novel was Peteni's only novel. Childhood Peteni was born in Zingcuka in the Qoboqobo district in the former Ciskei, on 6 December 1915.

#5212

Adrien Goetz

#58565

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Adrien Goetz is a French Art History Professor, art critic and novelist. He graduated from the École Normale Supérieure. His work appeared in Zurban, and Beaux-Arts Magazine. He is Lecturer in Art History at the Sorbonne., and the Editor of Grande Galerie, the magazine published by the Louvre Museum. Adrien Goetz was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts - Institut de France in December 2018.

#5213

Felicity Nussbaum

#124719

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Felicity A. Nussbaum is Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include 18th-century literature and culture, critical theory, gender studies and postcolonial and Anglophone studies. In the past she taught at Syracuse University and Indiana University South Bend.

#5214

Kathleen Graber

#75960

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Kathleen Graber is an American poet and professor of creative writing and poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has also taught at New York University. Early life and education Graber was raised in Wildwood, New Jersey where she still owns a home. She studied under poet Stephen Dunn and went on to earn her BA in philosophy from New York University. She quit teaching middle school English to afford herself the ability to enroll in an MFA program and pursue a career in poetry. Kathleen said of the experience, "Most poets live humble lives, I think, and maybe that is by temperament or d...

#5215

Amber Dermont

#152033

Overall Influence

Amber Dermont is an American author. She has a bachelor's degree from Vassar College, an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, and she is a faculty member at Rice University.

#5216

Art Taylor

#156642

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Art Taylor is an American short story writer, book critic and an English professor. Early life and education Taylor was born and raised in Richlands, North Carolina. He graduated from Episcopal High School, a private school in Alexandria, Virginia. He went onto Yale University where in 1990 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, and he received a Master of Arts in 2003 from North Carolina State University and a Master of Fine Arts in 2006 from George Mason University.

#5217

Andrew R. Heinze

Andrew R. Heinze

#40933

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Andrew R. Heinze is an American playwright, non-fiction author, and scholar of American history. Growing up in New Jersey in a close-knit Jewish family, he left home at fourteen to attend Blair Academy, graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts, and moved to California. He did his graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, training in American history, with an emphasis on the history of race, immigration and the history of American Jews. During his academic career he taught both American and Jewish history at several American universities and was a tenured professor of his...

#5218

Joe Cardarelli

#136899

Overall Influence

1944 - 1994 (50 years)

Joe Cardarelli was a poet, painter, graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and teacher of writing at the Maryland Institute College of Art for 27 years. Cardarelli pushed generations of MICA artists to incorporate writing into their creative repertoire, and regularly collaborated with his faculty colleagues on projects and performances. He is noted for establishing poetry series such as the Black Mountain poets, St. Valentine’s Day Poetry Marathon, and the Spectrum of Poetic Fire at MICA. In its 25th year, the Spectrum of Poetic Fire reading series still brings quality poets to MICA’...

#5219

Dzvinia Orlowsky

Dzvinia Orlowsky

#68053

Overall Influence

Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Ukrainian American poet, translator, editor, and teacher. She received her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She is author of six poetry collections including Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones for which she received a Sheila Motton Book Award, and Silvertone for which she was named Ohio Poetry Day Association's 2014 Co-Poet of the Year. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted in 2009 as a Carnegie Mellon University Classic Contemporary. Her sixth, Bad Harvest, was published in fall of 2018 and was named a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in Poetry.

#5220

Carlo Rotella

#79883

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Carlo Rotella is an American non-fiction writer and academic. Life Carlo Rotella is the son of Salvatore Rotella, a chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago originally from Sicily. His mother was from Spain and was a professor of comparative literature at St. Xavier University in Chicago. They lived in South Side, Chicago. He attended the nearby University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. His undergraduate education was at Wesleyan University, and his PhD in American studies from Yale University. He is a professor of American studies, English, and journalism at Boston College.

#5221

Josiane Balasko

Josiane Balasko

#45882

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Josiane Balasko is a French actress, writer, and director. She has been nominated seven times for César Awards, and won twice. Career One of Balasko's most recognized roles among English speakers is as a lesbian in 1995's . She won the 1996 César Award for best screenplay, and was also nominated as best director. The movie itself was nominated for best film. Balasko's other César nominations for best actress were for Too Beautiful for You , , and That Woman .

#5222

Craig McGregor

#84323

Overall Influence

1933 - 2022 (89 years)

Craig Rob Roy McGregor was an Australian journalist, essayist, academic, cultural observer and critic. Life and career McGregor grew up in Jamberoo and then Gundagai in New South Wales, before his family moved to Sydney. There he was awarded a scholarship to attend Cranbrook School, but he left at 16 to work at the Sydney Morning Herald. He completed a degree at the University of Sydney through night classes.

#5223

Maxine Scates

#119568

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Maxine Scates is an American poet. Life Born and raised in Los Angeles, she received a B.A. in English from California State University, Northridge, where she studied with the poet Ann Stanford, whose selected poems Holding Our Own: The Selected Poems of Ann Stanford she later co-edited with another former student of Stanford's, the poet David Trinidad. She moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1973 to pursue an M.F.A. at the University of Oregon which she received in 1975.

#5224

Kieran Egan

#90450

Overall Influence

1942 - 2022 (80 years)

Kieran Egan was an Irish educational philosopher and a student of the classics, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and cultural history. He has written on issues in education and child development, with an emphasis on the uses of imagination and the stages that occur during a person's intellectual development. He has questioned the work of Jean Piaget and progressive educators, notably Herbert Spencer and John Dewey.

#5225

Mary La Chapelle

#111438

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Mary La Chapelle , is an American short story writer. Life La Chapelle graduated from University of Minnesota, and from Vermont College with an MFA. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in Lumina, Nimrod, Northern Lit Review, Redbook, and First.

#5226

Steve Tomasula

#105696

Overall Influence

Steve Tomasula is an American novelist, critic, short story, and essay author known for cross-genre narratives that explore conceptions of the self, especially as shaped by language and technology. Biography Steve Tomasula grew up along the industrial border between East Chicago and the South Side of Chicago, the locale used as the setting in his novel IN&OZ. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois, Chicago. While working on his first novel, he taught in the Middle East. After his return, he joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame, where he is currently a professor of English.

#5227

Arthur Evans

#89903

Overall Influence

1942 - 2011 (69 years)

Arthur Scott Evans was an early gay rights advocate and author, best known for his 1978 book . Politically active in New York City in the 1960s and early 1970s, he and his partner began a homestead in Washington state in 1972, then later moved to San Francisco where he became a fixture in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. In his later years, Evans remained politically active and continued as a translator and academic. His 1997 book Critique of Patriarchal Reason argued that misogyny had influenced "objective" fields such as logic and physics.

#5228

Zachary Lazar

#129378

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Zachary Lazar is an American novelist. Lazar was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned an A.B. degree in Comparative Literature from Brown University and M.F.A from the University of Iowa Iowa Writer's Workshop . In 2015, he was the third recipient of the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, "given biennially to a writer in mid-career whose work has demonstrated consistent excellence."

#5229

Martin Stanton

#50170

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Martin Stanton is a British writer, teacher and psychoanalyst. Biography He is known for his pioneering work in establishing Psychoanalytic Studies as a distinct and thriving academic subject that is now taught in universities around the world – he founded the first prototype Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, in 1986. He is equally known for his innovative and challenging work on the nature and function of unconscious processes. This began this with his first book Outside the Dream – and originally and free-associatively explored the vital impact of Lacanian thinking on contemporary psychoanalysis at that time .

#5230

Takashi Hiraide

#47090

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

is a Japanese poet and critic. His works available in English translation include For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut and The Guest Cat , both published by New Directions. Weblinks Official Homepage of Takashi Hiraide

#5231

Dee L. Clayman

#55436

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Dee L. Clayman is an American classical scholar and a professor of Classics at the City University of New York. She is a pioneer in the effort to digitize the humanities and served as president of the Society for Classical Studies.

#5232

Stephanie Young

#135206

Overall Influence

Stephanie Young is an American poet, activist, and scholar who lives in Oakland, California. Young teaches at Mills College, where she is also the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Programs. At Mills College, Young participated as labor organizer in a successful adjunct unionization campaign. Institutional politics in the university have been a theme in her work.

#5233

Susan L. Taylor

Susan L. Taylor

#25102

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Susan L. Taylor is an American editor, writer, and journalist. She served as editor-in-chief of Essence from 1981 through 2000. In 1994, American Libraries referred to Taylor as "the most influential black woman in journalism today".

#5234

Eugene Current-Garcia

#117942

Overall Influence

1908 - 1995 (87 years)

Eugene Current-Garcia was a professor at Auburn University and became Auburn's Hargis Professor Emeritus of American Literature. He was a founding editor of the Southern Humanities Review and a noted scholar of Southern literature. He was named the first Phi Kappa Phi American Scholar in 1994, the first year of that biennial award.

#5235

Max Garland

#127937

Overall Influence

Max Garland is the author of The Postal Confessions, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry 1995; Hunger Wide as Heaven, winner of CSU Poetry Center Open Competition 2006; and The Word We Used for It, winner of the Brittingham Poetry Prize 2017. He was inducted as a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in 2018. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in Poetry, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, Georgia Review, Best American Short Stories, Creative Non-Fiction, and many other journals and anthologies. Awards include an NEA Fellowship for Poetry, a James Michen...

#5236

Wendy Scase

#116841

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Wendy Scase is the Geoffrey Shepherd Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Birmingham. She is currently researching the material histories of English medieval literature, studying a range of material from one-sheet texts to the largest surviving Middle English manuscript.

#5237

Maureen Medved

#101426

Overall Influence

Maureen Medved is a Canadian writer and playwright. She is also an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia. She has been published in literary journals and magazines and has had her plays produced in Vancouver, British Columbia, Waterloo, Ontario and Toronto, Ontario. She wrote a screenplay based on her first novel The Tracey Fragments, which was made into a film of the same name directed by Bruce McDonald and starring Elliot Page.

#5238

Carl Miller

#76635

Overall Influence

Carl Jack Miller is an author, speaker and researcher at Demos, a think tank based in London, where he co-founded the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media in 2012. Miller is also a visiting scholar and research fellow at King's College, London.

#5239

James Schevill

#104382

Overall Influence

1920 - 2009 (89 years)

James Erwin Schevill was an American poet, critic, playwright and professor at San Francisco State University and Brown University, and the recipient of Guggenheim and Ford Foundation fellowships. Summary He wrote more than 10 volumes of poetry, 30 plays, many essays, a novel, and biographies of Bern Porter and Sherwood Anderson. His plays include Lovecraft's Follies , The Ushers, Mother O, Shadows of Memory, The Last Romantics, Cathedral of Ice, The House on F Street and others. He received a literary award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for his plays. He also wrote the libretto for Jerome Rosen's opera .

#5240

Yvon Rivard

#122261

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Yvon Rivard is a Canadian writer from Quebec. He is a two-time Governor General's Award winner, receiving the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction in 1986 for Les silences du corbeau, and the Governor General's Award for French-language non-fiction in 2013 for Aimer, enseigner.

#5241

Jeb Livingood

#127333

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jeb Livingood is an American essayist, short story writer, editor, and academic. Life He graduated from University of Virginia, American University, George Mason University, and University of Virginia, with an M.F.A. in 2000.

#5242

David Lloyd

#106857

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

David Lloyd is a poet and professor of literature living in the United States though born in 1955 in Dublin. He holds a B.A. , an M.A. , and a PhD in Literature and Colonialism, all from Cambridge University. Lloyd has been Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and at the University of Southern California after previous appointments at Scripps College, Claremont, and the University of California, Berkeley. He became Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside in 2013.

#5243

G. C. Waldrep

#108104

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

G. C. Waldrep is an American poet and historian. Biography Waldrep was born in South Boston, Virginia. He earned undergraduate and doctoral degrees in history at Harvard University and Duke University, respectively, before receiving an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa.

#5244

Michelle Grattan

Michelle Grattan

#18129

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Michelle Grattan is an Australian journalist who was the first woman to become editor of an Australian metropolitan daily newspaper. Specialising in political journalism, she has written for and edited many significant Australian newspapers. She is currently the chief political correspondent with The Conversation, Australia's largest independent news website.

#5245

Arne Wiig

#115408

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Arne Ivar Wiig is a Swedish minister, poet, author, playwright, actor, hymnwriter, translator, lecturer. Wiig was born in Karlskoga, Värmland. He was educated at KadS A9 Kristinehamn . He earned his Master of Divinity at Lund University and began his doctoral studies there. Ordained as minister in the Church of Sweden in Karlstad Cathedral . Bachelor of Arts , Master of Art , Licentiat of Theology , Doctor of Theology . Chairman of the Frans Michael Franzén Society, Sweden. Hemit nr 339 at Johan Henrik Thomanders Studenthem Lund, Sweden.

#5246

Samantha Thornhill

#83260

Overall Influence

Samantha Felisha Thornhill is a poet, author, educator and producer from the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Biography Thornhill's interest in poetry began in 6th grade when she wrote a poem about Christmas in Trinidad. This established a connection with her Trinidadian roots. She attended Wellington High School in West Palm Beach, Florida, where she was assisted by her 10th grade English teacher to develop her writing skills. Thornhill later began to contribute to the school's literary magazine, Poetry Justice. By her senior year, she became the editor-in-chief of the magazine. She atte...

#5247

Israel Horovitz

#79312

Overall Influence

1939 - 2020 (81 years)

Israel Horovitz was an American playwright, director, actor and co-founder of the Gloucester Stage Company in 1979. He served as artistic director until 2006 and later served on the board, ex officio and as artistic director emeritus until his resignation in November 2017 after The New York Times reported allegations of sexual misconduct.

#5248

Ira Gitler

#101237

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Ira Gitler was an American jazz historian and journalist. The co-author of The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz with Leonard Feather—the most recent edition appeared in 1999—he wrote hundreds of liner notes for jazz recordings beginning in the early 1950s and wrote several books about jazz and ice hockey, two of his passions.

#5249

Mia Slavenska

#60930

Overall Influence

1916 - 2002 (86 years)

Mia Slavenska, née Čorak was a Croatian-American soloist of the Russian Ballet of Monte Carlo in 1938–1952 and 1954–1955. Biography Mia was born in Slavonski Brod in the Croatian family of the pharmacist Milan Čorak and his wife, housewife Gedwiga Čorak. When their daughter was one year old, the family moved to Zagreb. There Mia studied ballet at the "Josephine Weiss school" and the Russian émigré, ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater and Diaghilev's Russian Seasons Margarita Frohman. Taking the stage from the age of five, at the age of sixteen she became the prima ballerina of the ballet troupe of the HNK in Zagreb.

#5250

Carmen Castillo García

Carmen Castillo García

#137981

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Carmen Castillo García is a Spanish Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology at the University of Navarra in Pamplona. She is the second woman to obtain a Latin Philology Chair in Spain. She is an expert on the Roman province of Baetica in southern Iberia.

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