Ulfers was born in Giessen, Germany in 1934. He immigrated to New York, New York, where he attended college. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the City College of New York in 1959, a Master's degree in 1961 from NYU, and a Ph.D. from NYU in 1968. Ulfers began teaching at NYU in 1982 and has worked with EGS since its conception. He has been chair to a Nietzsche Conference at NYU, chair to a special session on Günter Grass for the Modern Language Association, as well as chair to a Session on Autobiographical Writings at Hofstra University. Ulfers has served numerous administrative functions, such as the NYU's German Department Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of the NYU in Berlin summer program in the Department of Global Affairs and, most recently, Director of the Deutsches Haus at NYU. On 15 March 2007, Ulfers was appointed Dean of the Media and Communications division at the EGS, in the place of Wolfgang Schirmacher. Ulfers has written on a variety of subjects, such as German Romanticism, the novel in the 20th century, philosophy at the turn of the century, and post-structuralism as well as deconstruction.
Works
Ulfers, Friedrich. Times Square as an Exemplar of Postmodern Urban Space. Toward a New Metropolitanism: Reconstituting Public Culture, Urban Citizenship, and the Multicultural Imaginary in New York and Berlin. Ed. Friedrich Ulfers, Gunter Lenz, and Antje Dallmann. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 251-60.
Ulfers, Friedrich. "Nietzsche's Amor Fati - The Embracing of an Undecided Fate." Accepted for publication in Poiesis - A Journal of the Arts and Communication.
Ulfers, Friedrich. "Nietzsche's Ontological Roots in Goethe's Classicism." in: Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition. Ed. Paul Bishop. Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
Ulfers, Friedrich. "Von der Skepsis zur Utopie: Musils Idee des 'Essaysismus'" in: Skeptizismus und literarische Imagination. Ed. Bernd Hüppauf and Klaus Vieweg. Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Ulfers, Friedrich. "Nietzsche's Idea of 'Bildung.'" in: Poiesis: A Journal of the Arts and Communication. 4 : 30-36.
Ulfers, Friedrich. "Friedrich Nietzsche as a Bridge from 19th Century Atomistic Science to the Process Philosophy of 20th Century Physics, Literature, and Ethics." in: Philological Papers 49: 21-29.