Julius Scott and the Importance of Being

Elisha Renne is Professor Emerita in the Departments of Anthropology and of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS), University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Elisha and Julius Scott were both faculty members in DAAS and lived in Ann Arbor. Renne is the author of Cloth That Does Not Die (1995); Population and Progress in a Yoruba Town (2003); The Politics of Polio in Northern Nigeria (2010); Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in NorthernNorthern Nigeria (2018); and Death and the Textile Industry in Nigeria (2021).

This volume is part illness narrative and part biography. It is impossible to separate part of an individual’s identity from the rest of their life, which is the point of this short volume. Historians will be familiar with Scott’s groundbreaking work on Atlantic world slavery, The Common Wind (2018), based on his Duke University doctoral dissertation. How much should readers know about his medical history? Scott was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1973, and the illness, which was ever-present in his adult life, was ultimately responsible for his death at age 66. Chapters 1–4, based in part on the author’s own journal of Scott’s life, cover his upbringing, including the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision in Houston, Texas, where Scott attended an elementary school with segregated bathrooms. Chapters 5–8 focus on his scholarly contributions and teaching, and memorial testimonies after his death in 2021. This book is useful for African American history, Africana studies, the history of medicine, and disability studies. Renne (emer., Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor) asks readers to understand Scott’s scholarly and pedagogical achievements in the context of his perpetual struggle with a debilitating disease, leaving them to ponder the intersection of race and health. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers and undergraduates.