Shani Mott, a scholar of Black studies at Johns Hopkins University whose examinations of race and power in America extended beyond the classroom to her employer, her city and even her own home, has died in Baltimore.
She died of adrenal cancer on March 12, said her husband, Nathan Connolly, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins.
Though Dr. Mott spent her career in some of academia’s elite spaces, she was firmly committed to the idea that scholarship should be grounded and tangible, not succumbing to ivory tower abstraction.
She encouraged students to turn a critical eye to their own backgrounds and to the realities of the world around them.
In a city like Baltimore, with its complicated and often cruel racial history, there was plenty to scrutinize.
Persons:
Shani Mott, Nathan Connolly, Johns Hopkins, Mott, Mott’s, ”
Organizations:
Johns Hopkins University, Johns, university’s, Africana Studies
Locations:
America, Baltimore