Russell Potter

Who is Russell Potter?

Russell A. Potter is an American writer and college professor. His work encompasses hip hop culture, popular music, and the history of British exploration of the Arctic in the nineteenth century. His books include Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism and Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818-1875, as well as a novel, Pyg: The Memoirs of a Learned Pig. He teaches at Rhode Island College, where he is editor of the Arctic Book Review. He also worked as a consultant on, and appears in, the Nova documentary Arctic Passage.

Potter was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1960. He attended St. John's Lutheran School, Gilmour Academy, and the Friends School in Cleveland. In 1979, he founded the Black Snake record label, on which he released two albums of his own solo guitar compositions, as well as a 45 rpm single of a bluegrass version of Devo's "Mongoloid" by the Hotfoot Quartet. He later attended Goddard College and The Evergreen State College; he earned his Ph.D. in English Literature from Brown University in 1991. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.