An Interview with Alvin W. Wolfe

Abstract

Alvin W. Wolfe made a number of important contributions to applied anthropology throughout a career lasting nearly 50 years. Born in Nebraska in 1928, he joined the US Army in 1945 where he received training in Japanese language and culture, as well as participating in the armored and the airborne corps. Using the GI Bill he enrolled in the University of Nebraska where he majored in anthropology and English, graduating in 1950. He became interested in archaeology by working in a museum under the direction of archaeologist A.T. Hill. To learn more about the other fields of anthropology, he enrolled at Northwestern University where he did dissertation fieldwork among the Ngombe, of the then-Belgian Congo, in 1952-53 under the direction of Melville J. Herskovits. In 1954-55, he was the Logan Museum Teaching Fellow at Beloit College, from 1955-57 he taught at Middlebury College, 1957-61 at Lafayette College, 1961-68 at Washington University in St. Louis, and from 1968-74 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In 1974, he joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, as part of the first Master's program in applied anthropology. He became the program's internship coordinator, and he participated in the establishment of the first Ph.D. in applied anthropology in 1984. In Tampa, he became active in social and medical service organizations, especially those involving the poor, children, families, and the elderly. He retired from USF as Distinguished Service Professor in May, 2003.