Janet Ann Adelman (January 28, 1941 – April 6, 2010) was an American Shakespeare scholar, literary critic, and professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
She served on both the graduate admissions and faculty appointments committees of what became the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, and she became the dissertation director for four Ph.D. students.
She served the University in numerous other capacities, among them as a member of the Reading and Composition Task Force from 2006 to 2007, and a participant in the search for a dean of humanities in 2005.
She studied biblical Hebrew at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and was preparing to teach a course at Kehilla on traditional liturgy before she died.
[1] In "The Common Liar: An Essay on 'Antony and Cleopatra,'" Adelman provides critical analysis on Shakespeare's tragedy from the roles and persona of the characters to the psychological and mystical matters.
"[4] Adelman's book addresses three sections of "Antony and Cleopatra": the uncertainty caused by the unreliability of historical information found in the text, the differences of background and tradition – “a tradition which emanates chiefly from Renaissance understanding of Dido and Aeneas, and of Mars and Venus myths”[5] – and the use of poetry and language Shakespeare uses in the play.
She approaches the work as she becomes increasingly informed about her religious traditions by attending the Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont, California.
Her husband of 33 years, Robert Osserman, said Adelman loved the theater, nature, bird watching and taking walks in Tilden Regional Park.
Creation and the Place of the Poet in Paradise Lost, in The Author in His Work: Essays on a Problem in Criticism, ed Louis L. Martz and Aubrey Williams (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 51–69.
Twentieth Century Interpretations of King Lear: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1978), 134 pp.
Shirley Nelson Gamer, Claire Kahane, and Madelon Sprengnether (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 119–41.
'Born of Woman': Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth, in Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance (Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1985, New Series no.
Making Defect Perfection: Shakespeare and the One-Sex Model, Enacting Gender of the English Renaissance Stage, ed.