and Time Period

Merten Kröncke, Jana Eckardt, Agnes Hilger

Canonicity,

 

Gender,

An Empirical Reconstruction of the German Academic Canon

data & code

data & code

slides.com/agneshilger/dh2026

Overview

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical Background

3. Data and Methods

4. Results

5. Conclusion

data & code

slides.com/agneshilger/dh2026

Introduction

Related Work

  • Research on exclusions along gender, race, and class in Western literary canons
    • (e.g., Guillory 1993; on gender, e.g., Showalter 1971; Russ 1983; Whittle 2013; Heydebrand/Winko 1994; Rippl/Straub 2013)
  • Empirical reconstructions of canonicity, including examinations of gender-related aspects
    • (e.g., Algee-Hewitt/McGurl 2015; Porter 2018; Barré/Champs/Poibeau 2023; Brottrager/Stahl/Arslan 2021; Fredner/Porter 2024; González et al. 2021; Rohe et al. 2025;
    • on gender, e.g., Müller-Spitzer/Wortmann/Wolfer 2023; Fredner/Porter 2024; Schmidgall 2025; Teichmann 2026)

Aim

We aim to examine the connection between gender*, canonicity, and author time period within the context of the total population of German-speaking writers.

 

(Descriptive Approach)

*Categories limited to "female"/"male" due to data availability — not our conceptual understanding of gender.

...consider this hypothetical example

15%

Female Share in Today's Academic Canon

20%

10%

authors born in year y
  

authors born in year x

Female Share in Today's Academic Canon

... add author time period

...consider this hypothetical example

10%

authors born in year y

authors born in year x

40%

15%

Female Share in Population of Writers

... add population of writers

20%

Female Share in Today's Academic Canon

...consider this hypothetical example

... add author time period

Theoretical Background

Agnes Hilger, Jana Eckardt, Merten Kröncke: Taking a Step Back: Theoretical Fundamentals of Canonicity and its Empirical Reconstruction, in: Poetics Today 47.3 (2026) [forthcoming].

Explication

The canonicity of object O at time t in relation to a carrier group G is equal to the degree to which O has been deemed worthy of attention within G up to and including t.

Two Approaches to Reconstructing Canonicity

(1) Document Approach

(2) Survey Approach

Two Approaches to Reconstructing Canonicity

(1) Document Approach

(2) Survey Approach

Existing documents are analyzed as indicators of their originators’ evaluative attitudes toward an object or their recipients’ evaluative attitudes toward that object (due to influence).

People are asked about evaluative attitudes they or others hold toward an object.

Data & Methods

(3) Author Population

(2) Gender

(1) Canonicity

Jana Eckardt, Agnes Hilger, Merten Kröncke: 1000 Punkte für Goethe: Eine empirische Rekonstruktion des Kanons der neueren deutschsprachigen Literatur, in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik 37.1 (2027) [forthcoming].

Canonicity

Canonicity

We reconstruct the canonicity of German-language authors since 1600 in 2025 among German-language literary scholars.

 

We follow the document approach, i.e. we analyze documents such as literary histories as indicators of their originators’ or recipients’ evaluative attitudes toward authors.

Canonicity

Canonicity

DocumentsMetricNumber of Authors per Document Group
University reading list 1 (2, 3, …)Share of the author’s titles among all titles on the reading list717
University course catalog 1 (2, 3)Share of courses whose title or description mentions the author, relative to all courses587
Killy-LiteraturlexikonLength of the article on the author (in words)4779
Reclam UniversalbibliothekNumber of the author’s titles and editions in the Universalbibliothek293
Literary history 1 (2)Share of pages mentioning the author out of all pages in the literary history1165
BDSLNumber of research contributions on the author4026
Total = 5167 Authors

Canonicity

Gender

https://gnd.network/Webs/gnd/DE/Home/home_node.html

Gender

https://sta.dnb.de/doc/GND-DF-PERSON-GESCHLECHT

Gender in the GND:

  • male
  • female
  • unknown
  • (in principle) male + female
  • (in principle) free text

Author Population

all authors/writers associated with German-speaking countries and born since 1600:

 

79,000 individuals

Author Population

Authors with Canonicity Scores
(n=5,167)

Authors in the GND
(n=79,000)

Overall Population of Authors
(n=???)

Results

Distribution of German Academic Canonicity

Distribution of German Academic Canonicity (colored by gnd-gender)

Canonicity, rank and gender

Gender share by GND author birth year

Canonicity, Gender and Author Time Period

Canonicity, Gender and Author Time Period

Canonicity, Gender and Author Time Period

Conclusion

Conclusion and Discussion

data & code

  • intersectional perspectives
  • think more about baselines

Future Work

  • think about canonicity of time periods
  • canonization of 19th century female authors

Normative Implications

  • male bias
  • author time period dependency

 

Learnings

Appendix

dh2026

By Agnes Hilger

dh2026

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