{"id":7516,"date":"2014-05-18T22:21:51","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T03:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=7516"},"modified":"2014-05-18T22:44:19","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T03:44:19","slug":"top-humanists-of-the-last-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/05\/18\/top-humanists-of-the-last-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Top humanists of the last century"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0theme that’s been coming up in my conversations recently (including when visiting\u00a0UC Davis<\/a>) is the question of the\u00a0“humanities canon”: i.e., who are the theorists whose views have been most influential in shaping the humanities disciplines, especially over the last century or so? And more specifically, is there anything approximating an\u00a0“environmental humanities canon,” and who are its key theorists?<\/p>\n

I’ll leave the second question for later. As for the first, an easy place to start is with a simple Google Scholar search for some of the most commonly cited humanists of the last century.<\/p>\n

Is there any question about who will top that list?\u00a0For me there wasn’t. (Drumroll coming.) But after first place, there were some surprises.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A few caveats:<\/p>\n

The list does not distinguish between theoretical works and other kinds of writings (literary, popular, et al.) except insofar as Google Scholar already does that. So Umberto Eco’s novel\u00a0The Name of the Rose<\/em> counts alongside his semiotic writings. Nor does it distinguish between the names listed in book titles as opposed to books for which the named individual\u00a0is the author. (For instance, “Adolf Hitler” results in “about 89,000 results,” but it’s likely that most of these are books about<\/em> Hitler rather than books he authored.)<\/p>\n

The numbers following the names refer to the number of “results” listed for the entire name — first and last name contained in quote marks, e.g., “Edward Said,” even if this refers to a book entitled The Things Edward Said<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Numbers in square brackets indicate the exact cite number for scholars with Google Scholar “user profiles.”<\/p>\n

Note that some results are a little perplexing: for instance, Thomas Kuhn’s book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” has 70,362 citations, but the name “Thomas Kuhn” only delivers “about 52,900 results.” I’m guessing this\u00a0is because some of the “Structure” citations list his name as “T. S. Kuhn” or something else.<\/p>\n

Finally, there are names I might not have searched for. If you think of any, search their name on Google Scholar and, if they beat Judith Butler, let me know who they are (in the comments section). The loose rule is that they both published books in the 20th century (and\/or 21st) and lived well into that century.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, some whose lives ended before that century began, but whose publications swelled well into our time period. If\u00a0Karl Marx were allowed on the list, he’d win — with 582,000 results. Kant (180,000) and Shakespeare (125,000) would also be up there in the top 10.<\/p>\n

I’ve also indicated any individual books (by these theorists) with more than 30,000 citations.<\/p>\n

The winner? Of course it’s Michel Foucault. (I’ll leave aside the fact that some consider him an “anti-humanist,” or a “post-humanist.” Or that he’d be more interested in how the category of “the humanities” emerged than in who wins a popularity contest within it.)<\/p>\n

\"Foucault6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Michel Foucault<\/strong> 394,000 [447,638] (Discipline and Punish<\/em>, 41,036; History of Sexuality Vol. 2<\/em>, 30,641)<\/li>\n
  2. Sigmund Freud 291,000<\/li>\n
  3. Pierre Bourdieu 188,000 [338,987] (Distinction<\/em> 30,625)<\/li>\n
  4. John Dewey 163,000<\/li>\n
  5. Jacques Derrida 129,000 [144,342]<\/li>\n
  6. Hannah Arendt 125,000<\/li>\n
  7. Roland Barthes 99,900<\/li>\n
  8. Marin Heidegger 87,700<\/li>\n
  9. John Rawls 82,700 (A Theory of Justice<\/em> 48,566)<\/li>\n
  10. Jean Piaget 82,100<\/li>\n
  11. Jean-Paul Sartre 74,800<\/li>\n
  12. Jacques Lacan 74,600<\/li>\n
  13. Gilles Deleuze 66,200<\/li>\n
  14. Ludwig Wittgenstein 64,900<\/li>\n
  15. Amartya Sen 63,900<\/li>\n
  16. Karl Popper 63,400<\/li>\n
  17. Edward Said 62,500<\/li>\n
  18. Noam Chomsky 59,400<\/li>\n
  19. Anthony Giddens 57,100<\/li>\n
  20. Jurgen Habermas 54,700<\/li>\n
  21. Umberto Eco 53,300<\/li>\n
  22. Thomas Kuhn 52,900 (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions<\/em>, 70,362)<\/li>\n
  23. Clifford Geertz 51,200 [108,214] (Interpretation of Cultures<\/em> 32,782)<\/li>\n
  24. Judith Butler 51,200<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And here’s another list to cross-check this one against:<\/p>\n

    Times Higher Ed Most Cited Authors in the Humanities list (2007)<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A\u00a0theme that’s been coming up in my conversations recently (including when visiting\u00a0UC Davis) is the question of the\u00a0“humanities canon”: i.e., who are the theorists whose views have been most influential in shaping the humanities disciplines, especially over the last century or so? And more specifically, is there anything approximating an\u00a0“environmental humanities canon,” and who are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[203],"tags":[16146,109062],"class_list":["post-7516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academe","tag-canon","tag-humanities"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1Xe","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7564,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/06\/03\/top-humanists-final-results\/","url_meta":{"origin":7516,"position":0},"title":"Top humanists: final results","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Since most of us love lists -- or at least love and hate them simultaneously\u00a0--\u00a0here is\u00a0the updated\u00a0version of the \"Top humanities theorists\u00a0of the last century\" list. See the previous version for the full criteria and the caveats. Briefly: it's a list of the most cited humanities theorists of the last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11148,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/12\/14\/what-are-the-humanities-two-cultures-redux\/","url_meta":{"origin":7516,"position":1},"title":"What are the humanities? (Two cultures, redux)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 14, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"As a humanistic scholar within an interdisciplinary school, I'm often put in a position to distinguish how the humanities differ from the social and natural sciences. There is a long tradition of distinguishing between these \"two cultures,\" with the most frequent point of focus, for humanists, being that they concern\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/liu-tema-genus-posthumanities-hub.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/liu-tema-genus-posthumanities-hub.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/liu-tema-genus-posthumanities-hub.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/liu-tema-genus-posthumanities-hub.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/10\/liu-tema-genus-posthumanities-hub.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7540,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/05\/19\/prize-announcement\/","url_meta":{"origin":7516,"position":2},"title":"Prize announcement","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Announcing a competition: Which\u00a0scholars should be on the list of \"Top humanists of the last century\" but are not? The person who names the greatest number of such names by the end of the day (12 midnight) EST next Sunday\u00a0-- using the methodology specified there (a simple Google Scholar search)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6946,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/10\/14\/realism-peirce\/","url_meta":{"origin":7516,"position":3},"title":"Realism & Peirce","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Levi is out swinging (in the most entertaining way possible; I love it when he gets on a roll, and I do agree with him on much of it). Of course, there's not much new in what he says (that hasn't been said by Left-realists for the last few decades,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"File:ProperfrontPM.JPG","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/d\/dd\/ProperfrontPM.JPG","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8785,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/06\/08\/state-of-the-eco-humanities-take-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":7516,"position":4},"title":"State of the Eco-Humanities, Take 1","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This post is the first of a series of reflections on the state of the Environmental Humanities, or Eco-Humanities, and of where this interdisciplinary field might be headed. A note on terminology: The term \"Environmental Humanities\" has\u00a0caught on in ways that \"Eco-Humanities\" and other variations have not, but the debate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8637,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/03\/19\/what-we-ask-students-to-read\/","url_meta":{"origin":7516,"position":5},"title":"What we ask students to read…","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Both\u00a0Open Culture\u00a0and The New York Times have reported on the Open Syllabus Project, which has tallied over\u00a0a million college course syllabi to determine the 10,000 or so most commonly assigned texts. The project also provides a\u00a0cluster map\u00a0of these texts, which is probably less interesting (and more confusing) in its large\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7516"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7539,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7516\/revisions\/7539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}