Hey, I have a Ph.D. in the humanities and I know what methylation is. Of course, I also have a B.A. in recombinant gene technology and did two years of grad school in molecular biology, and I was obsessed with DNA methylation at the time . . . so I may be a bit of an outlyer. :-)

I would be interested in seeing a breakdown along human-bonobo-chimpanzee lines, as bonobos have a handful of neotenous features as well. The most notable is in the positioning of the vagina, making face-to-face copulation more comfortable and therefore more likely (as it indeed is in bonobos). It seems sexual neoteny came first, then upright walking, then the big brain.

Of course arts go through changing fashions, but a great work will also withstand the test of time. And, one would expect that a lot could be said about a text early on, and less and less over time. I also note that Austen's popularity has been creeping up -- this may, however, be a demonstration of the increased numbers of people studying literature, which would also affect the numbers for Proust, Kafka, and Joyce. I would like to see a graph showing the number of scholars entering the field over the same period. I would also be interested to see what has been replacing the Big Three (perhaps with their decreasing popularity, they need a bailout?).  
 
As far as Kafka is concerned, he has popularity for all ages of academic. The reason is that he anticipated many features of the 20th century, including the dominance of bureaucracies and their oppressive nature. He anticipates Existentialism, and the attempts by the postmoderns to turn us all into isolated automata. In many ways, then, he is a transitional writer, and thus a tragedian of sorts.  
 
Joyce has such a high curve because he was a difficult writer, and that just gives scholars a lot to work with. I wold be willing to bet that you see something similar with Heidegger, for the same reason. In fact, it might be fun to see the trend lines for various philosophers, to see their popularity over the 20th century. May I suggest: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Sartre, Derrida, Wittgenstein, Plato, and Aristotle.

Yes, the accusations of partisanship have increased, but I think that has been used to mask an actual increase in bipartisanship. Once the Republicans got rid of the Gingrich crowd who were interested in a strongly ideological conservatism that approached libertarianism (please note that one of the members of that group was Bob Barr, now the Libertarian Party candidate for President) in order to try to keep power, they acted just like the Democrats in most things, especially in economics. And, despite the rhetoric, the Democrats are almost identical to the Republicans on social issues. Even on things like abortion, they are really arguing about the nuances of when it is appropriate to have an abortion, not if it is appropriate. The policies put in place by both parties following 9-11 and the recent bailout make it even clearer that the Republicans and the Democrats are almost identical in their desire for the government to seize power throughout the country. And whether it is Obama with his factually-inaccurate understanding of economics or McCain with his admitted ignorance of economics, the outcome was the same: both voted for the bailout bill, which has resulted in the partial nationalization of many banks (and before the bailout, the U.S. government already nationalized Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, thus bringing back into the fold two huge mistakes which will remain mistakes, since nobody will get rid of them). The elevated rhetoric has only worked to mask these facts. I don't think that's an accident, either.

They also thought the same thing to be true of their being Marxists. However, it is probably best not to judge a work by the claims of the creators. It's often interesting to see what happens despite an artist's theories. 
 
Incidentally, Freud was sent some stuff by Andre Breton, the founder of the surrealist movement, and Freud hated it. To the extent that the surrealists were Freudians, it seems Freud wasn't a Freudian.

Just because Freud misread Oedipus, don't attribute that work as being one which supports his nutjob theory. Quite the contrary. The play actually supports the Westermarck Effect.

Are you familiar with Don Beck and Chrisphoer Cowan's book "Spiral Dynamics"? I would be very curious to see your take on their idea (actually, Clare Graves' idea) of psychological and social emergent complexity.

one should read Wolin's "The Seduction of Unreason" to see that the postmodernists' ideas are primarily founded in a combination of fascist and Marxist ideas. Heidegger, for example, was an unrepentant Nazi, and one simply cannot have pomo without him.

Insofar as evolutionary psychology is scientific, it can be verified and/or falsified. And, insofar as biological approaches to literature involve testable hypotheses, it will have more longevity than mere fashions such as Marxism and deconstruction. For example, I developed a theory that meaningful words in literary texts will have a fractal distribution through the text. I tested that theory on Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure," and was able to show that there did seem to be a fractal distribution of theme words such as "friend," but not of non-theme words such as "love." One could prove or disprove this by showing that literary texts do or do not have fractal (and I would also include biotic) patterns of word distributions across texts throughout time, and in different languages. So these scientific approaches are not in fact anything like the fads of the past any more than Newtonian physics or Darwinian theory of evolution are fads.

Now I want to see the graphs for these terms used in the humanities. While you're at it, include such terms as "chaos theory," "strange attractors," etc. I'd be curious to see how my approach to the arts and humanities is faring.