A co-citation network built from the bibliographies of PhD dissertations (2009–2026). Each circle is a modern scholar. Its size is the number of dissertations that cite them at least once. Two scholars are linked when the same dissertations tend to cite both, and frequently paired scholars are pulled close together.
A sample, not a census. The counts come from bibliographies parsed from the full text, not from estimates. But 32 dissertations from 22 universities cannot stand for the whole field: 14 cover Greek and Roman antiquity, 10 late antiquity and early Byzantium, and 8 the medieval Latin, Jewish and Islamic Mediterranean, and 9 are from Harvard. See Method & limits.
Including 6 master's and BA theses (38 works in all). All six are on classical, mostly Roman, topics, and their bibliographies are much shorter (46–121 scholars, against roughly 100–1,100 for the dissertations). This view tilts the map toward Roman gender and sexuality, and largely shows what is taught: Richlin, Skinner, Fantham, Beard and Keith all rise, while Foucault and Halperin lose share. Counts are out of 38.
32 PhD dissertations (2009–2026) in which gender or sexuality is central and the setting is the ancient or medieval Mediterranean, broadly understood. The study's window is 2010–2026; one 2009 dissertation (Levin-Richardson, Stanford, on Roman graffiti and sexuality) was included by the project's decision. 9 came from Harvard's open repository (DASH), found by keyword search and screened by hand. The other 23 were chosen to spread across universities and subfields, and were supplied as PDFs. Each one's author, title, year, institution and doctoral status was checked against the document itself and a repository, catalogue or ProQuest record. The full list is in the "32 dissertations" tab.
Excluded after checking: 6 master's theses and 1 undergraduate capstone (Ortega, Orizaga, Schenck, Palmer, Perkins, Cattan-Prugl, and an out-of-scope UCSB thesis on Polybius). Two doctoral dissertations were also left out as geographically borderline: Blakelock (Toronto 2017, on sexuality in twelfth-century French schools) and Alameen (Temple 2013, comparing ancient Egypt and Igboland). Adding those two changes no count by more than one. Also excluded as out of scope: West (Syracuse 2018, English, on postwar Hollywood epics set in antiquity: a reception study) and Chakravorty (Boston University 2024, on kinship and exemplarity in Roman imperial literature, where gender is not central).
Extraction. Each PDF was converted to text, and its bibliography located and split into entries by code. Sections labelled as primary sources (ancient and medieval texts and their editions, Arabic sources and the like) are skipped. Ancient authors cited by name are not counted, and nor are lexica and encyclopedias (Liddell–Scott, Lewis & Short, Pauly–Wissowa). Co-authors and editors are counted. Footnote-only citations are not, since only the bibliography is read.
Counting. A scholar counts once per dissertation, however many of their works it cites. Names are matched by surname and first name. A citation given with initials only is assigned automatically only when exactly one known scholar fits.
Hand audit. For every scholar on the map, each initials-only citation was checked against the title of the cited work. This found and fixed some cases where same-initial scholars were conflated:
The audit also resolved initials-only citations that had been dropped as ambiguous (Sharon L. James, Averil Cameron, Malcolm Davies, Therese Martin) and merged spelling variants (Maud/Maude Gleason, Matthew/Mathew Kuefler). One citation that could not be attributed with confidence remains dropped.
Links. Link strength is cosine-normalised co-citation: the number of dissertations citing both scholars, divided by the square root of the product of their separate counts. It runs from 0 to 1. Only pairs cited together in at least two dissertations are linked. The layout is a force simulation, so distances are approximate and the orientation means nothing.
Gender follows each scholar's own public self-identification (pronouns, institutional biographies). Judith Butler, who identifies as nonbinary, is shown as nonbinary. These are attributes of the cited scholars, not inferences from first names.
Living or deceased is as of November 2026, from three checks:
The checks corrected 30 scholars first assumed to be living, including several recent deaths: Averil Cameron and Teresa de Lauretis (2026), Manuela Marín (July 2026), Henri Pleket (2025) and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (2024). Pat Easterling's 2026 death rests on a single tribute. Other corrections include Jerome Pollitt (2024), Gloria Ferrari Pinney (2023), Ian Jenkins and Rudolf Kassel (2020).
For one scholar (Saara Lilja) the evidence was too weak, so her status is "not determined". Younger scholars were not individually searched, so a very recent death could be missed. "Living" means no death notice was found.
Reading the skew. The figures cover only scholars on the map (cited 3 or more times), and "share of citations" weights each scholar by how many works cite them. Gender balance among the cited is not the same as gender balance in the field's authorship, which this study does not measure.
Sample size and selection. 32 dissertations is enough to see broad patterns, not to rank closely matched scholars. A one-dissertation difference is within noise. The non-Harvard dissertations were chosen for spread, not at random, and only open-access or downloadable ones could be included.
Institution effect. 9 of the 32 are from Harvard, mostly early Christianity, so the late-antique cluster partly reflects one program's reading lists.
Field size. Classicists share a large common bibliography, so antiquity scholars clear the map's threshold more easily than specialists in smaller fields. The "Most cited within each field" tab corrects for this.
What a citation means. A bibliography entry shows a scholar was used, not how much or approvingly. A theorist cited once for framing counts the same as a specialist cited throughout.
Added 4 dissertations: Funke (Washington 2013, Euripides and gender), Feltovich (Cincinnati 2011, women's social bonds in Greek and Roman comedy), Walker (Bryn Mawr 2017, the virgin and the otherworldly bridegroom) and Levin-Richardson (Stanford 2009). Antiquity now has 14 dissertations against 10 and 8 in the other fields, so antiquity scholars weigh more heavily in the overall ranking. Foucault now leads (14 of 32), followed by Butler (12), Richlin and Halperin (11) and Dover (10). The map grows to about 300 scholars, mostly through Greek drama, religion and Roman social history specialists reaching the 3-citation threshold.
Added 7 dissertations: Minardi, Walsh, Stewart, Robinson, Admiral, Vogler and Wise. Corrected the misattributions listed above, which removed five scholars (Joan Kelly, Eliezer Segal, Diane Owen Hughes, "Stephen" Humphreys, Louise Wilkinson) whose place on the first map came from others' citations. The top four (Butler, Foucault, Halperin, Richlin) were unaffected by the corrections.