Biography
Channelle Russell is a scholar-writer with a vested interest in questions of cultural representation, race, and gender amidst ruptured discursive and aesthetic encounters with/in slavery’s symbolic inheritances. Born in Jamaica and raised in the coastal American South, Channelle's research brings cultural theories of power, race, and gender to bear on our contemporary cultural moment.
Prior to joining Columbia, Channelle earned her Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews in Scotland and her Bachelor of Arts from Emory University, where she studied English, History, and Anthropology. As a Mellon Mays Fellow, her research has been generously supported by the Mellon Foundation, Emory University’s Department of History, and the Robert T. Jones Scholarship at the University of St Andrews. She previously worked as a curatorial intern at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture's Center for the Study of Global Slavery, where she conducted research for the global exhibition “In Slavery’s Wake.”
Channelle is also a creative writer currently at work on a novel exploring spectacle, reality TV, and unruly queer women. She writes the culture newsletter, Girl Uninterrupted.
