Russel Blaine Nye (February 17, 1913 – September 2, 1993) was an American professor of English who in the 1960s pioneered popular culture studies.
[1] He was the author of a dozen books, including George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel which won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
In 1938 he married Kathryn Chaney, and in 1940 he completed his doctorate on George Bancroft again at the University of Wisconsin.
[2] Nye taught in the English department at Michigan State University from 1941 to 1979.
[3] In 1957 after Ralph Ulveling, the director of the Detroit Public Library, claimed that L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had no value and should not be stocked by libraries, Nye and Martin Gardner published a new critical edition of the novel highlighting its value, causing a firestorm of controversy, followed by eventual acceptance.