Cary Wolfe


Cary Wolfe currently teaches English at Rice University. He has written on a range of topics, from American poetry to bioethics. He has been a significant voice in recent debates in Animal Studies and advocates a version of the posthumanist position. He is series editor for Minnesota Press's . He was born and grew up in North Carolina.

Education

In 1984 Wolfe read Interdisciplinary Studies in English, Philosophy, and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill, where he received a B.A. with Highest Honors. He later received an M.A. from the Department of English at Chapel Hill in 1986. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of English, at Duke University in 1990.

Academic career

Wolfe's first teaching position was as an Assistant Professor at the Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1990. He remained at Indiana until 1998, at which time he was Associate Professor of American Studies. Wolfe moved to the University at Albany, part of the State University of New York system as a Visiting Professor. At Albany, he later served as Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Chair, Department of English, 1998–1999, and was made a full Professor in 1999. In 2003, he was offered an endowed professorship at Rice University in Houston TX. He continues to teach at Rice and holds the Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor, Department of English. Wolfe also directs a Center of Critical and Cultural Theory at Rice, 3CT.

Published works

Books

The Limits of American Literary Ideology in Pound and Emerson, Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, no. 69.
Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the "Outside," Theory Out of Bounds Series, no. 13.
Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and the Posthumanist Theory. Nominated for the James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association, 2004.
What is Posthumanism?
Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame

Edited collections

The Politics of Systems and Environments I and II, special issues of Cultural Critique 30 and 31, ed., with William Rasch.
Observing Complexity: Systems Theory and Postmodernity .
Critical Ecologies, special issue of EBR: Electronic Book Review 4, ed., with Joseph Tabbi. Online. World Wide Web: http://www.altx.com/ebr.
The MSN issue: Music/Sound/Noise, special issue of EBR: Electronic Book Review, ed. with Joseph Tabbi and Mark Amerika. Online. World Wide Web: http://www.altx.com/ebr.
Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal.
The Other Emerson, ed. with Branka Arsic.