Tibor Frank


Tibor Frank was a Hungarian historian who was professor of history at the School of English and American Studies of the Faculty of Humanities of the Eötvös Loránd University. He was director of its School of English and American Studies. From 2013 he was corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, as of 2019 he was a full member.

Biography

Tibor Frank was born in 1948 in Budapest, Hungary. He graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in 1971 with an M.A. in History and English, obtaining his Dr. Univ. in Modern History there. He received his Ph.D. in history at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, his habilitation in history at ELTE in 1996, and his D.Litt. at the HAS in 1998. He also attended Cambridge University, England.

Academic career

Frank started his career at ELTE in the Department of Modern History and continued at the Department of English Studies, where he taught British history. He was one of the founding members of the Department of American Studies in ELTE in 1990 and chair from 1992 to 1994. In Spring 2000 he set up the Ph.D. program in American Studies at ELTE and continued as its program director until the end of his life.
Frank's areas of research were the period from 1848 to 1945; with respect to international migrations; international images, stereotypes, and propaganda; transatlantic relations; historiography; music and politics.
Professor Frank was chairman of the Commission of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, chairman of the 2nd Bolyai Grant Program and a member of the Book and Journal Commission of the academy. Frank founded Hungary's Modern Filológiai Társaság of Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1983, and served the association as secretary general from 1983 to 1996 and as vice president between 1996 and 2007. He served as member on the board of Historical Abstracts, Nationalities Papers, Polanyiana, the European Journal of American Culture and Külügyi Szemle. From 2015 he was editor of Századok, journal of the Hungarian Historical Association.
Frank was co-president, and became honorary president in 2004, of the Hungarian Association of American Studies and was a board member of the European Association for American Studies. He was a member of the board of the U.S.─Hungarian Fulbright Commission ; from 2010 to 2011 and again from 2017 he was chairman of the U.S.—Hungarian Fulbright Board. Between 2007 and 2015 he was deputy chairperson of Magyar Történelmi Társulat, in 2015 he was elected chairman of the editorial board of its journal Századok.

Visiting professorships and research grants

Between 1988 and 1990 Tibor Frank was a Fulbright Visiting Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and also at UCLA. In 1990–91 he was invited to the University of Nevada, Reno as a distinguished visiting professor of history sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Between 1988 and 1997 he taught at UCSB Summer Sessions; between 1994 and 1997 he was founder and director of UCSB's The New Europe program. He was an István Deák Chair Visiting Professor at the history department of Columbia University in the City of New York in 2001, 2007, and 2010. His Humboldt Prize of 2002 took him to the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, Germany.
From 1992 he was a regular visiting professor at the Education Abroad Program of the University of California in Budapest, Hungary, at the Salzburg Seminar's Center for the Study of American Culture and Language in Salzburg, Austria, in the Nationalism Studies Program of the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, in the UNESCO-sponsored Minority Studies Program of the Institute of Sociology of ELTE, and the IES Abroad Vienna in Vienna, Austria.
Between 2003 and 2009 he acted as a team leader, with Frank Hadler, of the European Science Foundation Programme "Representations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe", coedited as Disputed Territories and Shared Pasts: Overlapping National Histories in Modern Europe, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011.

Honors and awards

Tibor Frank was awarded the Országh Award in 2000, the Humboldt Forschungspreis from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for 2002, and the Szent-Györgyi Albert-díj of the government of Hungary in 2005. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London in 2006.

Family

Frank was married to psychologist and author Zsuzsa F. Várkonyi, an honorary university professor.

Books

The British Image of Hungary 1865-1870, 369 p.Marx és Kossuth, 165 p.Egy emigráns alakváltásai. Zerffi Gusztáv pályaképe 1820-1892, 330 p.Aru bomeisha no henshin: Zerufi Gusutaavu Den, 381 pEthnicity, Propaganda, Myth-Making: Studies on Hungarian Connections to Britain and America 1848-1945 Szabadság és felelősség: Az Egyesült Államok és a németországi nácitlanítás a második világháború után , 91 p.Britannia vonzásában, 306 p.Amerika világai, 600 p.Szalonvilág - A polgári érintkezés modernizálódása a 19. században, 208 p.
Textbooks
  • Tibor Frank and Tamás Magyarics: Handouts for British History: A Study Guide and Workbook, 329 p.
  • Tibor Frank and Tamás Magyarics: Handouts for U.S. History: A Study Guide and Workbook
Edited books
  • Erzsébet Perényi and Tibor Frank, eds: Studies in English and American, Vol. 2, 472 p.
  • Tibor Frank and Erzsébet Perényi, eds: Studies in English and American, Vol. 3, 251 p.Studies in English and American, Vol. 4, 283 p.Tanulmányok a Magyar Rádió történetéből 1925-1945, 438 p.
  • Frank Tibor és Hoppál Mihály, szerk.: Hiedelemrendszer és társadalmi tudat, 341 + 301 p.The Origins and Originality of American Culture, 801 p.Values in American Society, 270 p.Roosevelt követe Budapesten. John F. Montgomery bizalmas politikai beszélgetései 1934-1941, 351 p.Discussing Hitler: Advisers of U.S. Diplomacy in Central Europe, 1934–1941, 376 p.Ever Ready to Go: The Multiple Exiles of Leo Szilard, Vols. 1-3, 447 p.Angliától Nagy-Britanniáig. Magyar kutatók tanulmányai a brit történelemről, 405 p.John F. Montgomery: Magyarország, a vonakodó csatlós, 2. kiadás, 335 p.Gál István: Magyarország és az angolszász világ, 947 p.Honszeretet és felekezeti hűség. Wahrmann Mór 1831-1892, 693 p.Gyarmatokból impérium. Magyar kutatók tanulmányai az amerikai történelemről, 366 p.Zwischen Roosevelt und Hitler. Die Geheimgespräche eines amerikanischen Diplomaten in Budapest 1934–1941, 401 p.
  • Frank Tibor és Károly Krisztina, szerk.: Anglisztika és amerikanisztika. Magyar kutatások az ezredfordulón, 438 p.
  • Frank Tibor és Károly Krisztina, szerk.: Gateways to English: Current Hungarian Doctoral Research, 376 p.
  • Tibor Frank and Frank Hadler, eds: Disputed Territories and Shared Pasts: Overlapping National Histories in Modern Europe, 430 p.Németföldről Németországba. Magyar kutatók tanulmányai a német történelemről, 364 p
  • Frank Tibor és Károly Krisztina, szerk.: 125 éves a budapesti angol szak. Doktorandusztanulmányok, 158 p
  • Frank Tibor és Károly Krisztina, szerk.: Az angol tudománya. 125 éves az egyetemi angol szak, 1886-2011, 360 p.Az orosz birodalom születései. Magyar kutatók tanulmányai az orosz történelemről, 414 p.