Russel Blaine Nye was born in Viola, Wisconsin in 1913. He received a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Wisconsin. Nye joined MSU’s faculty in 1940 and was head of the English Department from 1946 to 1959. He was named distinguished professor of English in 1962 and retired in 1979. Nye was a leading authority on American culture. Early in his career, in 1945, he won the Pulitzer Prize in biography for his first work, George Bancroft: Brahmin Rebel. Nye was also a pioneer in the field of popular culture studies and was the founder of the Popular Culture Association in 1971. The Michigan State University Library’s Popular Culture Collection, renamed for Nye in 1978, contains thousands of items from popular fiction genres, 19th century Sunday school books, the comic arts, popular information, and the popular performing arts. This collection holds what is arguably the largest comic book collection in the United States. Nye died in 1993.
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