Adams retires to help Zimbabwe women
After teaching sociology at Lewis & Clark for 24 years, Richard Adams, associate professor emeritus of sociology, has retired to begin a new career as executive director of the Zimbabwe Artists Project.
Zimbabwe is the most politically and economically stable of new African nations, Adams explains. It achieved liberty from English-speaking white settlers in 1980.
Beginning with a sabbatical in 1992, Adams spent two years developing a Lewis & Clark overseas study program in Zimbabwe that focused on issues of gender and social change.
He led Lewis & Clark students on overseas study programs in Zimbabwe in 1994, 1997 and 1999.
"In 1997," Adams says, "just three weeks prior to the trip’s departure, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I wasn’t about to give up what I love best about Lewis & Clark—teaching students in an overseas environment."
So, Adams adopted a treatment plan that allowed him to travel and to teach in Weya, an agricultural-based community about 100 miles from Zimbabwe’s capital. Today, his cancer is in remission.
Weya’s women are a living study of gender and social change, Adams says. In 1987, they sought help from a German woman who taught sewing and other fabric crafts. Since then, the Weyan women have crafted colorful appliquéd and embroidered quilts that tell stories of village life. They also create paintings on fabrics and boards.
"After the women began to sell their artwork, they had a broader role in the community," he says. "They saw themselves as creative beings."
Adams found himself changing, too.
"At the same time that I was battling cancer, the women in the village asked me to sell their art," he says. "It was an opening of new doors, a convergence of possibilities. It was a wonderful opportunity, so I said, ‘yes.’"
Adams, who spent five of his teenage years with his missionary parents in India, later returned to India as a Fulbright scholar.
Adams has taught courses for the College’s gender studies program since 1980. Students selected him as Teacher of the Year in 1994.
He earned his master’s degree and doctorate from Duke University and his bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) from Hillsdale College.
—by Kris Anderson
More faculty news | 
