Ellen Spence Poteet, lecturer in the Department of History, died April 3 in Batouri, Cameroon, where she is buried, as she wished. Cameroon was dear to her heart and central to her sense of purpose in the world.
She was born in 1960 and raised primarily in New Orleans. There she studied ballet for many years, attended Ursuline Academy for two years and graduated from Isidore Newman School.
Ellen earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in history at Bryn Mawr College and her Master of Arts and Ph.D. dgrees in history at the University of Michigan. She held academic appointments at Muhlenberg College and at U-M.
Although Ellen’s graduate training was in early Christianity, she embraced a wide range of frameworks in her teaching of history, including the Byzantine empire, medieval Europe, and Africa from antiquity to the modern era. Over the course of her studies and teaching, she learned several languages, both ancient and modern.
Ellen was particularly interested in how the evolution of west African societies was influenced by the intersection of Christianity, Islam and indigenous religions, and in the need to orient one’s understanding of African society within this prism.
After living in several central and eastern African countries for extended periods of time, often in communities with large Muslim populations, Ellen found a spiritual home in Cameroon. During leaves from her academic position, she dedicated her time in Cameroon to teaching, especially incarcerated adults.
At U-M, she was an important part of the Africanist community, where she relished her relationships with visiting scholars and students from Africa. She was a lecturer in the LSA’s history department since 2006.
Monasticism and nomadism were important to Ellen as subjects not only for the classroom but also as ways of life. Having lived among monastics, she maintained deep ties to that world. She also developed enduring friendships with nomadic people in Africa.
Although she was a creature of habit in how she went through her days, Ellen was comfortable in having no settled home. A red bike was her beloved means of transportation in Ann Arbor. Otherwise, she walked pretty much everywhere she wanted to go, even resisting rides from moto chauffeurs in Cameroon. Her evening walks, taken with no destination in mind, were crucial to her well-being.
Ellen was an independent thinker and a committed activist. As a supporter of radical causes, she was deeply influenced by the leftist politics of her father, Ewing M. Poteet, a noted violinist, music critic and teacher.
After college she worked for New York Public Research Group, and during graduate school she wrote several essays of criticism for the socialist journal Against the Current, each marked by her fierce intelligence.
An inveterate letter-writer, Ellen regularly corresponded with many people, always by hand, unless circumstances necessitated the use of an electronic device. Those fortunate enough to be in her epistolary orbit were treated to lengthy and keenly observed accounts of her daily life and surroundings, the most vivid of these stemming from her experiences in Cameroon.
Ellen is survived by her stepsister, Ruth S. Robertson of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin; a cousin, Susan C. Wilson of Longview, Texas, among numerous other cousins; and many friends from Michigan to Cameroon. In addition to her father, Ellen was predeceased by her grandparents Malcolm and Mildred R. Spence; mother, Shirley Silvernail; and stepfather, John Silvernail.
As she once said of her father, Ellen exhibited a great humanity, which came of living widely and deeply.
— Submitted by LSA
