Charles Russell

assoc director, Rutgers Institute

Charles Russell serves as Director of the Rutgers Graduate Program in American Studies and as Associate Director of the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. An Associate Professor of English, he is author of *Poets, Prophets, and Revolutionaries: The Literary Avant-Garde from Rimbaud through Postmodernism*, and is editor of *Self-Taught Art: The Culture and Aesthetics of American Vernacular Art*, among other books. Most recently, he co-edited with Professor Carol Crown of the University of Memphis, *Sacred and Profane: Voice and Vision in Southern Self-Taught Art*. His current research focuses on contemporary American literature and art, especially the work of Robert Stone and the theoretical formulations of mainstream and outsider art. He teaches courses in American literature, the foundations of literary study, and contemporary literature and art.