Frederik Stjernfelt
Professor
Center for Semiotics
University of Aarhus
Building 1467
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 7
DK-8000 Aarhus C
DENMARK
Tel. +45 871 63195
CURRICULUM VITAE
I was born in Aalborg and migrated to Copenhagen immediately after high school in 1976. 1987, I graduated from the Nordic Department of University of Copenhagen with a degree in Nordic Literature, having written treatises on Old Norse mythology and on catastrophe theory and semiotics, respectively, which later appeared as books (1990; 1992).
Before that, however, my first book (1989) was an account of Danish 1980s art, written together with Poul Erik Tøjner under the title Billedstorm ("Iconoclasm"). From 1987 I began as a critic at the daily Information from where I moved to Weekendavisen in 1994, reviewing a wide range of books, mainly philosophical and scientific works. In 1991, I was at the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Aarhus, and from 1992 to 2004 I was at the Dept. for Comparative Literature at the University of Copenhagen. From 1993 co-editor of the journal KRITIK. The collection of papers Rationalitetens Himmel ("Heaven of Rationality", 1997) is half analytical papers on different types of literature and art, half theory of literature and semiotics. The inspiration from catastrophe theory and my general scientific outlook had already predisposed me to a realist view of semiotics—and thus against scepticist, vitalist, and deconstructivist views of many kinds—and now Peirce's notion of diagrams caught my interest as a suitable meta-concept for such a realist semiotics, also encompassing the developing American traditions for cognitive semantics and cognitive linguistics. I decided to pick that issue for my dr. phil. treatise which was much later defended (2006) and published (2007) under the headline of "Diagrammatology”.
During the same period, the long editing work on the the huge History of Ideas in 3 volumes Tankens Magt ("The Power of Thought", together with Ole Knudsen and Hans Siggaard) required much more work and problem-solving than foreseen when planning began in 1994 — the 2500-pages work finally appeared in 2006.
In the 1990s I had been disgusted with the passivity of the West during the slaughter of the Bosnian Muslims, and during the early 2000's, I devoted much work to investigate the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, this resulting in two books co-written with novelist Jens-Martin Eriksen, Hadets Anatomi and Krigens Scenografi ("Anatomy of Hatred"; "Scenography of War"), half travelogues and half more analytical, scholarly books, and I gradually took a new interest in political philosophy. This, together with my scepticism against scepticism led me to publish Kritik af den negative opbyggelighed ("A critique of negativism") together with the poet Søren Ulrik Thomsen in 2005, and in 2007 I published a small introduction to logic and argumentation together with Vincent Hendricks, Tal en Tanke.
I intend to pursue further the research into the semiotics of diagrams and Peircean logic representation, just as I currently work on a volume on the diffuse concept of "multiculturalism" together with Eriksen. Further plans include a monograph on the poet Klaus Høeck as well as a critical history of ideas of vitalism as opposed to the Enlightenment ideas.
INTERNATIONAL NETWORK
Marcello Barbieri Universita di Ferrara, Italy
brr@unife.it
Paul Cobley, London Metropolitan University, Great Britain Paul
LondonMet@aol.com
Göran Dahl, University of Lund, Sweden
Goran.Dahl@soc.lu.se
Marcel Danesi, University of Toronto, Canada
marcel.danesi@utoronto.ca
John Deely, University of St. Thomas, Houston, US
deelyj@stthom.edu
Charbel El-Hani, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil
Peter Gärdenfors, University of Lund, Sweden
peter.gardenfors@lucs.lu.se
Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford University, US
sepp@stanford.edu
Risto Hilpinen, University of Miami, US
hilpinen@miami.edu
Jaakko Hintikka, University of Boston, US
hintikka@bu.edu
Aud Sissel Hoel, University of Trondheim, Norway
aud.sissel.hoel@hf.ntnu.no
Michael Hoffmann, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, US
m.hoffmann@gatech.edu
Nathan Houser, University of Indiana, US
nhouser@iupui.edu
John Michael Krois, Humboldt Universität, Berlin, Germany
KroisJ@philosophie.hu-berlin.de
Kalevi Kull, University of Tartu, Estonia
kalevi@zbi.ee
Christina Ljungberg, University of Zürich, Switzerland
cljung@es.unizh.ch
Winfried Nöth, Universität Kassel, Germany
noeth@uni-kassel.de
Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, University of Helsinki, Finland
pietarin@mappi.helsinki.fi
Roland Posner, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
posner@kgw.tu-berlin.de
Joao Queiroz, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil
queirozj@gmail.com
Lucia Santaella, PUC, Sao Paulo, Brazil
santaella@nospam@incubadora.fapesp.br
Karl Erik Schøllhammer, PUC, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
karlerik@let.puc-rio.br
Barry Smith, State University of New York at Buffalo, US
phismith@buffalo.edu
Göran Sonesson, University of Lund, Sweden
goran.sonesson@semiotik.lu.se
John Sowa, VivoMind Intelligence Inc., US
sowa@bestweb.net