CV

Contents

Appointments

  1. Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Literature, Oregon State University, 2025–
  2. Visiting Assistant Professor of Data Science and Statistics, University of Richmond, 2024–2025
  3. Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer, University of Virginia, 2021–2024

Education

  1. Ph.D., English; Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities, Stanford University, 2021
  2. A.B., English magna cum laude, Harvard University, 2012
  3. Undergraduate Teacher Education Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2012
  4. Visiting Student of English, St Peter’s College, University of Oxford, 2011

Publications

  1. Erik Fredner, “Moving the Capital of US Literature from Boston to New York: Evidence from 11 Million Library of Congress Catalog Records,” The Nineteenth-Century Data Collective, ed. Meredith Martin and Megan Ward, Princeton University Libraries, 2025.
  2. Erik Fredner and J.D. Porter, “Counting on The Norton Anthology of American Literature,” PMLA 139.1: 50–65, 2024.
  3. Erik Fredner, “A Meaning Apart from Its Indistinguishable Words,” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 48.1: 82–98, 2022.
  4. Erik Fredner, “Hamlin Garland’s ‘Problem of Individual Life,’” Nineteenth-Century Literature 76.3: 354–383, 2021.
  5. Erik Fredner, “Averaging Americans: Literature, Statistics, and Inequality,” doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 2021. Committee: Gavin Jones, Mark Algee-Hewitt, Mark McGurl, and Paula Moya.
  6. Erik Fredner, “Enumerations: Data and Literary Study by Andrew Piper,” Studies in the Novel 52.2: 220–222, 2020.
  7. Mark Algee-Hewitt, Erik Fredner, and Hannah Walser, “The Novel as Data,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Novel, ed. Eric Bulson, 189–216, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
  8. David McClure, Mark Algee-Hewitt, Steele Douris, Erik Fredner, and Hannah Walser, “Organizing Corpora at the Stanford Literary Lab: Balancing Simplicity and Flexibility in Metadata Management,” Proceedings of the Workshop on Challenges in the Management of Large Corpora: 25–29, 2017.

Works in Progress

Please see my research page.

Awards

  1. Center for the Humanities Faculty Research Fellowship, Oregon State University, 2026–2027
  2. Critical AI Literacy Summer Teaching Fellowship, Oregon State University, 2026
  3. College Fellows Development Grant (literature on Jeopardy!), University of Virginia, 2024
  4. College Fellows Development Grant (The MLA International Bibliography), University of Virginia, 2022
  5. Mellon Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center, 2020–2021
  6. City University of New York–Stanford Exchange Fellow, The City College of New York, 2018–2019
  7. G.J. Pigott Scholar, Stanford University, 2017–2018
  8. Excellence in Teaching Award, Department of English, Stanford University, 2017

Presentations

  1. “Canons Across Anthologies of World, Western, and National Literatures,” Symposium: “Mapping the Canon: Quantitative Approaches to Literary History,” Technische Universität Darmstadt, 2026.
  2. “The Literary Canon on Jeopardy!, 1984–2024,” Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, 2025.
  3. “The ‘Already Implicit’ Canon: Data from Anthologies of African American Literature,” Digital Americanists Panel, American Literature Association, Boston, Massachusetts, 2025.
  4. “Leaving New York? Imprint Geographies of US Literature since 1945,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2025.
  5. “The Ends of Reading,” Faculty and Staff Symposium, University of Richmond, 2024.
  6. “The MLA International Bibliography’s History of English-Language Literary Studies,” Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, George Mason University, 2024.
  7. “Anthologies as Databases,” Digital Americanists Panel, American Literature Association, Chicago, Illinois, 2024.
  8. “The Ends of Reading: Reading Statistics and the Overestimation of Literary Studies’ Aim,” Reader Studies in the Digital Age Symposium, Price Lab for Digital Humanities, University of Pennsylvania, 2024.
  9. “How Much is Literary Knowledge Worth on Jeopardy?” Stanford Literary Lab, 2024.
  10. “How to Publish (Computational) Literary Studies Research,” Department of English, Stanford University, 2024.
  11. “Challenging Nineteenth-Century Data Legacies,” Mellon Sawyer Seminar, Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, 2024.
  12. “Mining The MLA International Bibliography,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2024.
  13. “Mining The MLA International Bibliography,” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2024.
  14. “Du Bois, Statistical Thinking, and Irony,” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2024.
  15. “Implications of Large Language Models for Teaching and Research,” New Curriculum Pedagogy Workshop, University of Virginia, 2023.
  16. “How Literary Canons Evolve: A Data-Driven Approach,” Department of English, The College of William & Mary, 2023.
  17. “Elden Ring and Exegesis,” Department of English Speakers Series, University of Virginia, 2023.
  18. “What Good is Distant Reading for Our Reading?” Duke University, 2023.
  19. “On Scholarly Podcasting,” Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, 2022.
  20. “Counting on The Norton Anthology of American Literature,” DH Unbound, Association for Computers and the Humanities, 2022.
  21. “Counting on Literature,” New Curriculum Lecture, University of Virginia, 2021.
  22. “Length and Weight,” Universitatea Lucian Blaga, Sibiu, Romania, 2021.
  23. “Introduction to Computational Text Analysis in Python,” Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, 2021.
  24. “New Histories of Quantitative and Computational Methods,” Modern Language Association, Toronto, Canada, 2021.
  25. “Citizenship at Scale,” C19, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2020.
  26. “Antebellum and Postbellum,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2020.
  27. “Typicality in the US Novel,” Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, Ottawa, Canada, 2020.
  28. “Celebrities,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2020.
  29. “Introduction to Computational Text Analysis in Python,” Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, 2020.
  30. “Models of Enlightenment Knowledge” (presider), Modern Language Association, Seattle, Washington, 2020.
  31. “Modeling Hawthorne’s Concept of the Nation,” Modern Language Association, Seattle, Washington, 2020.
  32. “Microgenres,” Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2019.
  33. “n Types of Typicality,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2018.
  34. “Norton Anthologies: Database, Canon, Career,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2018.
  35. “The Statistical Imaginations of Hamlin Garland and Henry James,” Department of English, Stanford University, 2018.
  36. “Typicality,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2018.
  37. “Distant Reading with the Oxford English Dictionary,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2017.
  38. “Reformism and Statistics in Jason Edwards,” Stanford Consortium on the Novel, 2017.
  39. “The Type of the Average,” Stanford Working Group on the Novel, 2017.
  40. “Microgenres,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2017.
  41. “Reading the Norton Anthologies,” Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, Montreal, Canada, 2017.
  42. “Security in Foreign Affairs,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2017.
  43. “Synchronic and Diachronic Suspense,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2017.
  44. “How Many Novels Have Been Published in English?” Stanford Literary Lab, 2017.
  45. “Reading Norton Anthologies,” SyncDH, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2016.
  46. “Reading the Norton Anthologies: Databases, Canons, and Careers,” Stanford Literary Lab, 2016.
  47. “Standing Underneath: Melville, Confidence, Testimony,” Berkeley-Stanford Conference, University of California, Berkeley, 2016.
  48. “Fallible and Unreliable Narration in The Sound and The Fury,” Narrative and Narrative Theory, Stanford University, 2015.
  49. “Another Castle: The Stolen Princess Narrative in Literature and Video Games,” Infinite Possibilities: The Speculative Fiction Working Group, Stanford University, 2015.
  50. “Virality,” Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, Sydney, Australia, 2015.
  51. “Suspense... Language, Narrative, Affect,” Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, Sydney, Australia, 2015.
  52. “Current Projects of the Literary Lab,” SyncDH, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015.
  53. “Two Blocks Joined by a Corridor: Time in To The Lighthouse,” Stanford Literary History, 2015.
  54. “Inveigling Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Become a Ballet: cummings’s Tom,” Berkeley-Stanford Conference, Stanford, California, 2014.
  55. “On the Stanford Literary Lab’s Pamphlet Series,” Future of Publication Workshop, Stanford, California, 2014.

Collaborations

  1. “Counting on Anthologies of African American Literature,” with J.D. Porter, Arthur Knight, and Alexander Nwala, 2022–
  2. “The MLA International Bibliography as Literary History,” with Mark Algee-Hewitt, 2021–
  3. “Celebrity,” a collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution
  4. “Typicality,” with Mark Algee-Hewitt, 2018.
  5. “Microgenres,” with Mark Algee-Hewitt, Michaela Bronstein, Abigail Droge, Ryan Heuser, Alexander Manshel, Nichole Nomura, J.D. Porter, and Hannah Walser, 2017.
  6. “Security,” with Mark Algee-Hewitt, Whitney McIntosh, and Stephen Stedman, 2015.
  7. “Suspense,” with Mark Algee-Hewitt, Abigail Droge, Tasha Eccles, Morgan Day Frank, J.D. Porter, Andrew Shephard, and Hannah Walser, 2014.

Teaching

As instructor of record

  1. Introduction to Fiction, Oregon State University, 2025–26
  2. Advanced Data Science, University of Richmond, 2024–2025
  3. Introduction to Data Science, University of Richmond, 2024–2025
  4. Text Classification with Large Language Models, The Text Analysis Pedagogy Institute, 2024
  5. From Language to Data, University of Virginia, 2021–2024
  6. Punching Up: US Satire, University of Virginia, 2021–2024
  7. Summer Research Program, Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, 2020
  8. Literary Text Mining, Stanford University, 2018–2019
  9. World Humanities 101, The City College of New York, 2018–2019
  10. Writing-Intensive Seminar in English, Stanford University, 2017–2018

As teaching assistant

  1. Literary Text Mining, Stanford University (instructor Ryan Heuser), 2018–2019
  2. Pedagogy, Stanford University (instructor Paula Moya), 2017–2018
  3. Narrative and Narrative Theory, Stanford University (instructors Paula Moya and J.D. Porter), 2015–2016
  4. “Literary History III (1850–1950),” Stanford University (instructor Franco Moretti), 2014–2015

Public Humanities

Roles

  1. Data scientist, “The Stuff of Fame,” Stanford Literary Lab and Smithsonian Institution, 2019–2021
  2. Editor, Café podcast, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2019–2021
  3. Presenter, Data Privacy and Security Workshop, Stanford University, 2017–2021
  4. Contributor, Techne, Stanford Literary Lab, 2016–
  5. Writer, Kill Screen magazine, Kill Screen Media, 2014–2016
  6. Writer, Ph.D. Journalist Project, Stanford Humanities Center, 2014–2016

Articles

  1. “Typicality in US Literature,” Techne, 2020.
  2. “Finding Needles in 34 Million Haystacks,” Techne, 2019.
  3. “How Many Novels Have Been Published in English? An Attempt,” Techne, 2017.
  4. “The Peculiar Future of Video Game History,” Kill Screen, 2016.
  5. “Eavan Boland Interrogates Identity and Nationhood in New Collection,” The Humanities at Stanford, 2015.
  6. “Stanford Literary Scholar: White Whales and the ‘Melville Effect,’” The Humanities at Stanford, 2015.
  7. “The Year in Anti-Games,” Kill Screen, 2014.
  8. “Stanford Scholar Questions Whether Statues Are the Appropriate Way to Commemorate Mandela,” The Humanities at Stanford, 2014.

Podcasts

  1. “Matriculation: The Academic Transition to College”, Symposia, Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia, 2022.
  2. Andrea Goulet, Michelle Robinson, and Hector Hoyos on Crime Narrative, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2021.
  3. Nicholas Paige on Technologies of the Novel, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2021.
  4. Dorothy Hale, Nancy Ruttenburg, and Alex Woloch on The Novel and the New Ethics, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2021.
  5. Sharon Marcus on the 2020 Ian Watt Lecture, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2021.
  6. Wai Chee Dimock, John Plotz, and Colin Milburn on Planetary Futures, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2020.
  7. Ato Quayson, John Kerrigan, and Richard Halpern on Postcolonial Tragedy, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2020.
  8. Emily Apter, Rhonda Garelick, and Anne Higonnet on Fashion Stories, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2020.
  9. Stephen Best, Mario Telo, and Kris Cohen on None Like Us, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2020.
  10. Rita Felski on the 2019 Ian Watt Lecture, Café, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, 2019.

Service

  1. Reviewer, Humanities, 2025–
  2. Reviewer, Post45 Data Collective, 2025–
  3. Reviewer, PMLA, 2024–
  4. Generative Artificial Intelligence Committee, Department of English, University of Richmond, 2024–2025
  5. Reviewer, National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities, 2024–
  6. Invited referee, European Research Council, 2023–
  7. Reviewer, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2022–
  8. Consultant, Department of English, Stanford University, 2020
  9. Website administrator, Stanford Literary Lab, 2017–2020
  10. Reviewer, Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations Conference, 2016–
  11. Liaison, Berkeley-Stanford English Graduate Student Councils, 2015–2019
  12. Examiner, American literature practice qualifying exams, Department of English, Stanford University, 2015–2018
  13. Coordinator, Stanford Literary Lab, 2014–2019

Conferences Organized

  1. “Findings: Is Computation Changing the Study of Literature?” Stanford University, 2017.
  2. “Literature: A History of the Word,” Stanford University, 2016.
  3. “Making and Breaking: The Berkeley-Stanford Conference,” University of California, Berkeley, 2015.
  4. “Micromégas: The Objects of the Digital Humanities,” Stanford University, 2015.

Affiliations

  1. The Association for Computers and the Humanities, 2020–
  2. American Literature Association, 2020–
  3. C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 2019–
  4. Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, 2014–
  5. Modern Language Association, 2014–

Technical

Programming

Python, R, Tidyverse, Jupyter, RStudio, zsh, git, Claude, Codex

Scientific publishing

Pandoc, Quarto, Markdown, LaTeX, Django

Databases

SQL, Postgre, DBeaver

Data visualization

matplotlib, ggplot, Tableau

Natural language processing

spaCy, stanza, nltk, Ollama, LLMs

Languages

Spanish (intermediate); French (reading); Chinese (two semesters).

References

Available upon request.

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