Barbara Finegan Monahan (Faculty)

Barbara Finegan Monahan, of Providence; May 11. After teaching Russian briefly at Cranston East High School (R.I.), she served as senior lecturer from 1968 to 1992 in the Brown University Slavic Department, where she inspired many of her students to pursue careers using the language skills she imparted so creatively. In 1991, she was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. She was the author of A Dictionary of Russian Gesture (1983), an introduction and guide to the nonverbal component of the Russian language, and Russia’s Children, Our Children (1996), an exposé of the incidences of childhood cancers around nuclear power stations in Russia and in the United States. She was best known to her students as “babushka,” a classroom title she preferred to Professor Monahan. For decades, she challenged U.S. foreign and military policy from letter writing to street protesting. She also remained active promoting equality and equal access to healthcare and other human needs services.