UB professor to publish 13th book in Jerusalem
by ELIZABETH TAUFA Reporter

Professor Howard Wolf

Howard Wolf is approaching the 50th year of his teaching career.

"I've been at UB for 40 years; I taught elsewhere for five years," said the Eggertsville resident, who has three more years to teach at the University at Buffalo.

Wolf is a professor of short fiction, literary journalism, autobiography and modern British and American Literature.

Looking over his career as a professor and writer, Wolf has taken an international approach to his own life, and therefore of his teachings imparted to students.

"You discover your own country by leaving it and discovering the differences between it and other countries."

Wolf has traveled to Turkey, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, South Africa and Finland among other countries, writing essays on each destination.

He recently returned from an Easter term - mid-April to mid-June - at Wolfson College at Cambridge University in England. His position as emeritus professor and senior fellow at UB allows him to teach for one semester and travel for the other.

After receiving his doctorate from the University at Michigan in 1967, Wolf came to UB because of a growing psychoanalysis in literature department.

"The (English) department allowed for diverse interests to be pursued," he said. "It was more open to creativity than any other university in America."

The university also supported research opportunities for its staff, which included traveling overseas for lectures and the Fulbright Scholars Program.

Traveling, he said, gives him new opportunities for living and thinking, as well as exposing himself to cultural diversity.

"It creates a possibility of development in a way not possible only staying in one environment."

During his stay at Cambridge, Wolf kept himself busy by editing a volume of his short stories called "Exiles by Starlight" and travel essays chronicling his travels over a 25-year span called "Far-Away Places: Lessons in Exile," which will be published this year in Jerusalem.

"Far-Away Places" is Wolf's 13th book. He describes it as a book of letters written to various people during his travels.

"The theme of the book is exile so it made sense to publish in a country where many people are displaced from previous national affiliations," he said of the book's publication location. His daughter also resides in Israel, and frequent visits allowed him to make contacts there.

In spring 2008 he has a series of lectures planned in Slovakia, India and Japan.

"I have an essay called 'Some Recent Trends in American Life' that I'm always rewriting," he said. "I never give the same lecture twice."

While the end of his formal teaching career may be approaching, Wolf noted that he will continue to learn and write in a perhaps unconventional method of retirement.

"I think retirement is an obsolete concept and is popularly understood as a model of leisure," he said. "I view it as a model of continued human development."