Ankersmit, Frank 1945- (F.R. Ankersmit)

PERSONAL:

Born March 20, 1945, in Deventer, Netherlands; son of Rudolf (a director of a textile factory) and Catharine Ankersmit. Education: Attended University of Leiden; University of Groningen, M.A. (history), 1978, M.A. (philosophy), 1977, Ph.D., 1981. Politics: Liberal.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Glimmen, Netherlands. Office—Department of History, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 716, 9700 AS Groningen, Netherlands. E-mail—f.r.ankersmit@rug.nl.

CAREER:

University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands, faculty member, 1973—, professor of intellectual history and philosophy, 1993—. Telders Foundation, member of curatorium. Military service: Served in Dutch armed forces.

MEMBER:

Dutch Royal Academy of the Sciences, Wissenschaftliche Beirat van het Kulturwissenschaftliches Institute de Essen.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Scholar in the United States, Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Scientific Research (now Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), 1985.

WRITINGS:

IN ENGLISH

Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historian's Language, Nijhoff (The Hague, Netherlands), 1983.

(Editor) Knowing and Telling History: History and Theory, 1986.

(With J.A.A. Mooij) Knowledge and Language, Volume 3: Metaphor and Knowledge, Reidel (Dordrecht, Netherlands), 1993.

History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1994.

(Editor, with H. Kellner) A New Philosophy of History, Reaktion Books (London, England), 1995.

Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy beyond Fact and Value, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1997.

Historical Representation, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2001.

Political Representation, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2001.

(Editor, with Henk Te Velde) Trust: Cement of Democracy?, Peeters (Dudley, MA), 2004.

Sublime Historical Experience, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 2005.

Shorter works include The Reality Effect in the Writing of History: The Dynamics of Historiographical Topology, North-Holland Publishing (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1990. Editor, Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2007—.

OTHER

Denken over geschiedenis. Een overzicht van moderne geschiedfilosofische opvattingen, Wolters/ Noordhoff (Groningen, Netherlands), 1983.

De navel van de geschiedenis. Over interpretatie, representatie en historische realiteit, Department of History, University of Groningen (Groningen, Netherlands), 1990.

(With A. Kibedi Varga and M.C. Doeser) Op verhaal komen. Over narrativiteit in de mensen cultuurwetenschappen, Kok Agora (Kampen, Netherlands), 1990.

(With G. Nuchelmans, E. Steinmetz, and others) Tekstinterpretatie, North-Holland Publishing (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1990.

De historische ervaring, Department of History, University of Groningen (Groningen, Netherlands), 1993.

(With A. Kibedi Varga) Akademische beschouwingen over het postmodernisme, North-Holland Publishing (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1993.

(Editor, with M. van Nierop and H. Pott) Hermeneutiek en cultuur. Interpretatie in de kunsten de cultuurwetenschappen, Boom (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1995.

(With J. Tollebeek and W. Krul) Romantiek en historische cultuur, Department of History, University of Groningen (Groningen, Netherlands), 1996.

De spiegel van het verleden. Exploraties deel I: Geschieftheorie, Kok Agora (Kampen, Netherlands), 1996.

De macht van representatie. Exploraties deel II: cultuurfilosofie en esthetica, Kok Agora (Kampen, Netherlands), 1996.

Macht door representatie. Exploraties deel III: politieke filosofie, Kok Agora (Kampen, Netherlands), 1997.

Tegen de waarheid in de politiek, Rudolf von Laun Instituut (Leeuwarden, Netherlands), 2002.

(With W.E. Krul and E.H. Kossmann) Geschiedenis is als een olifant. Een keuze uit het werk, [Amsterdam, Netherlands], 2005.

(With G. Dales, N. Albayrak, and others) Om de Vrijheid Liberaal Manifest, [The Hague, Netherlands], 2005.

(Coauthor) Hart voor de publieke zaak. Rapport van de Nationale Conventie, [The Hague, Netherlands], 2006.

Contributor of more than 150 articles to scholarly journals. Member of editorial board of the book series "Transformation in Arts and Culture" and of the periodicals History and Theory, Rethinking History, Clio, Historiography East and West, Journal of the Interdisciplinary Crossroads, and Feit en Fictie.

Ankersmit's writings have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Finnish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Chinese.

SIDELIGHTS:

Frank Ankersmit told CA: "My primary motivation for writing is to understand the social and political world. My main topics of interest are history and politics, mainly the history of political ideas. The instrument I use for this study is the philosophy of language.

"My work is influenced by the idea of representation. Historical writing is a representation of the past, and representative democracy is at the heart of all democratic politics. Both historical writing and democratic politics have their ground in the aesthetic notion of representation.

"Recently I have been interested in how representation and experience are related. I want to discover how representation and experience may explain the social and political world in which we live."