Russell Potter

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Russell A. Potter is an American writer and college professor who has written on a variety of subjects, among them postmodern theory, 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 (1995) and Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818-1875 (2007). He teaches at Rhode Island College, where he serves as editor of the Arctic Book Review. He also worked as a consultant on, and appears in, the NOVA (TV series) documentary Arctic Passage (2006).

Potter was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1960. He attended St. John's Lutheran School, Gilmour Academy, and the Friends School in Cleveland (later the School on Magnolia). 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 single recording of a bluegrass version of DEVO's Mongoloid (song) 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.