Obituary: Taddesse Adera
Professor of English Taddesse Adera died suddenly at his home on January 17, 2006. A specialist in post-colonial literature, Professor Adera inspired hundreds of students to expand their understanding of literary study on a global scale.
In the 16 years he spent at the University, Dr. Adera taught a wide variety of courses ranging from African Literature, Women of Color, and the Literature of Resistance to Nobel Laureates of the Non-West and South African Literature. His commitment to excellence in teaching, service and scholarship led to his winning the 1997 Commonwealth’s Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia.
Dr. Adera’s scholarly work focused on a wide variety of post-colonial literatures. He edited Silence Is Not Golden: A Critical Anthology of Ethiopian Literature and translated V.I. Lenin’s The State and Revolution into Amharic. His edited anthology, The Road Less Traveled: Reflections on the Literatures of the Horn of Africa, is forthcoming in June from Africa World Press. He has published both poetry and short fiction in his native Amharic.
Also, Dr. Adera served as executive committee member and chair of the Division on African Literatures of the Modern Language Association, an editor for several scholarly journals, and as a member of the National Screening Committee for the Fulbright Program. He was awarded several grants to pursue his research, including one from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Dr. Adera’s biography exemplified his commitment to the themes he shared with his students. A native of Ethiopia, Dr. Adera championed civil rights and social justice, and led a resistance movement against the communist regime then in power, an action for which he was imprisoned in Ethiopia for three years. Upon his release, he emigrated to the United States and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
During his funeral, Dr. Adera was fondly remembered by family and friends, who uniformly recalled his dignity and pride, his warm and generous spirit, his profound integrity, his delight in his children, and the power of his smile. The University community shares in the grief of his family and friends, and will not soon recover from the loss of such a teacher, friend and scholar.
He is survived by his wife, two sons, and several brothers and sisters. Contributions in Dr. Adera’s memory may be sent to the University of Mary Washington Foundation-Adera Memorial Fund, Jepson Alumni Executive Center, 1119 Hanover Ave., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401.
– Teresa A. Kennedy, Chair, Department of English, Linguistics and Speech
