Barbara Leavy
September 11, 1936 – August 14, 2016
Riverside Chapels
Amsterdam Avenue & 76th Street
Monday, August 15 at 11:45 pm
We just received word from Peter Leavy that his beloved wife of 40 years, Barbara, passed away peacefully this morning after a long and courageous battle with cancer.
She was an intelligent, thoughtful woman, an excellent writer, educator, loving mother and devoted wife. Her contributions to Cabaret Scenes elevated the publication. Words cannot express how much she will be missed.
Her funeral will be at Riverside Chapels at Amsterdam Avenue and 76th Street on Monday at 11:45 AM.
Barbara Fass Leavy retired as a full professor from the Department of English, Queens College, the City University of New York. She still retains her honorary appointment as Adjunct Professor of English in Psychiatry at the DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.
Her previous work has focused on two areas: literature and folklore; and the theme of plague in literary works from the Middle Ages to the present. Rather whimsically she told her six granddaughters that she is an expert on mermaids, but in a more serious vein, to google her name and the word “mermaid” is to see how widespread is her work on such folklore figures as mermaids, mermen, trolls, demon lovers, and swan maidens. She has also written on gender relations and was formerly on the editorial board of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature.
Before retiring as a professor of literature, Leavy taught courses in crime fiction, specifically in Women and Crime Fiction and Crime Fiction and Culture (the ethnic detective). She has lectured on the elements of psychology in mystery novels to members of the Institute for the History of Psychiatry. Her study of Ruth Rendell brings together many areas of her studies: family relations, gender, disease as a literary theme, folklore, and mythology.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Barbara’s name to JDRF (The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) http://diabetesfoundation.jdrf.com/info/jdrf/.