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Claire Potter

US historian, professor of history at The New School

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ113618825 ↗
Source-derived summary

Claire Bond Potter is an American historian. She is a professor of history at The New School.

She is co-executive editor of the journal Public Seminar.

Potter received a BA from Yale University, where she studied English literature and worked for the Yale Daily News, and a PhD from New York University.

From 2006 to 2015, Potter wrote a blog called The Tenured Radical, hosted by The Chronicle of Higher Education from 2011 onward.

Her 2020 book Political Junkies was described in Publishers Weekly as "an illuminating rundown of historical trends in political journalism, from New Deal–era consensus building to today's super-partisan echo chambers".

Books

War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men and the Politics of Mass Culture (Rutgers University Press, 1998)

with Renee Romano, Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History that Talks Back (University of Georgia Press, 2012)

with Renee Romano Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical Restaged American History (Rutgers University Press: 2018)

Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (2020, Basic Books: ISBN 9781541644991)

References

External links

Official website

"Claire Potter (faculty profile)". The New School: Lang College of Liberal Arts.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Claire Potter” as uS historian, professor of history at The New School. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2006, 2015, 2011, 2020—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1958. The account is most persuasive where Claire, Potter and historian can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as uS historian, professor of history at The New School. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q113618825. VIAF identifies the subject as 55899016. The Library of Congress control number is n97059748. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2015, 2011 and 2020.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Claire Potter”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Claire Potter primary sources, Claire Potter archive and Claire research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Claire Potter”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Claire Potter” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.