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.

Received an M.A. from the Department of English at Chapel Hill in 1986.

Received his Ph.D. from the Department of English, at Duke University in 1990.

At Indiana University, Bloomington:

• Assistant Professor, Department of English, 1990—1996
• Associate Professor, Department of English, 1996—1998
• Assistant, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies, 1993-1998.
• Assistant, Associate Professor of American Studies, 1995-1998.

University at Albany, State University of New York: Visiting Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Chair, Department of English, ,1998—1999; Professor, 1999-2003.

Rice University, Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor, Department of English, 2003—present.

Books

The Limits of American Literary Ideology in Pound and Emerson, Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, no. 69 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the "Outside," Theory Out of Bounds Series, no. 13 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).

Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and the Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Nominated for the James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association, 2004.

What is Posthumanism? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010)

Edited collections

The Politics of Systems and Environments I and II, special issues of Cultural Critique 30 and 31 (Spring and Fall 1995), ed., with William Rasch (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Observing Complexity: Systems Theory and Postmodernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) (rpt. of the above in modified form with new introduction).

Critical Ecologies, special issue of EBR: Electronic Book Review 4 (Winter 1997), 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 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

The Other Emerson, ed. with Branka Arsic (New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming 2007).