In Memoriam: Olga Nedeljkovic (1937-2021)
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Professor Emerita Olga Nedeljkovic on April 20, at the age of 84. Olga joined the Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1976, not long after its inception, and retired in 2007.
During these 30-plus years, Olga made innumerable contributions to the department, the university, and our profession. At UIC, Olga was a jack of many trades, teaching Old Church Slavonic, undergraduate and graduate courses in Slavic linguistics and Polish, Russian and Serbian language and literature. For many years, she served as the head of the department.
A medievalist, Olga published widely both in Serbian and in English on the lives of saints, the history of Slavic Gospel, Old Church Slavonic, Slovenian and Macedonian linguistics, and on Slavophilism and Christian humanism in literature of the Balkans. In her later years, she became interested in Polish, Russian, and Serbian romantic and modernist poetry and postmodernist prose, publishing articles on Alexander Blok, Cyprian Konstanty Norwid, and Borislav Pekić. Olga possessed boundless intellectual curiosity and paid close attention to developments in contemporary poetry and prose. She was also an avid follower of current trends in historiography and literary and cultural theory and strived to apply new analytical methods to the study of medieval texts.
Ever excited about intellectual inquiry, enthusiastic about teaching, and kind and generous to her colleagues and students, Olga will be dearly missed.