Shirley L. Arora

Shirley L. Arora passed away on March 23^rd, 2021 at the age of ninety. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Stanford in 1950 and 1951 and her Ph.D. from UCLA in 1962. She began teaching in UCLA’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese in that same year, receiving promotion to Full Professor in 1976. In 1981 she became Department Chair, serving in this role for ten years. She retired from UCLA in 2000. Professor Arora was a renowned folklorist and paremiologist. Her dissertation, which she wrote under the direction of Stanley Robe, was published by the University of California Press under the title Proverbial Comparisons in Ricardo Palma’s “Tradiciones Peruanas” (1966). Other important scholarly contributions by Shirley Arora include her book Proverbial Comparisons and Related Expressions in Spanish (1977) and her much-cited article “The Perception of Proverbiality” (1984). She was the author of the novel What then, Raman? (1960), based on her experiences living in India with her husband. Professor Arora generously endowed a graduate student fellowship named after her, from which numerous students in UCLA’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese have benefited. A tribute in honor of Professor Arora was held at UCLA on April 6, 2022, with the participation of her son Alan Arora and her colleague Professor Wolfgang Mieder of the University of Vermont.