Former students and professional colleagues are mourning the death of Dr. Marcellus Blount, a well-known scholar of African-American literary and cultural studies who taught at Columbia University since 1985.
News of Blount’s passing shocked the literary and academic worlds, including colleagues and students who remembered him as brilliant, revolutionary and compassionate. His scholarship in African-American studies reimagined poetry, pop culture and gender and sexuality studies, particularly Black masculinity.
“We are devastated by the loss of our beloved friend and colleague Marcellus Blount,” a statement on the Columbia Department of English and Comparative Literature’s website said in part. “This news comes as a terrible blow to everyone who knew, worked with and studied with Marcellus. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, and we will miss him.”
Blount, who died in New York last week while on leave for the spring semester, received his bachelor’s degree from Williams College in 1980 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1987. At Columbia, he served as associate professor of English and Comparative Literature, a faculty fellow and former director at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS) and former director of the graduate program in African-American studies.
Dr. Farah Jasmin Griffin, a longtime friend to Blount and the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies at Columbia, said those who knew that Blount was ill were still “stunned” by his death.
“Until the very last, he was just full of life and joyful,” she said. He was “someone who took the scholarly side seriously, took the theory seriously, but also took being in the classroom very seriously … [He was] very devoted to his students to the very end. He made it all seem joyful.”
Upon meeting Blount for the first time in graduate school at Yale, Griffin recalled that the scholar was not callous even though he was a “legend” as a graduate student, she said.
