Diana Eleanor Gosselin Nakeeb

Diana Nakeeb held a B.A. from Hunter College, and both M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.  At the graduate level, she specialized in Russian literature, with secondary specializations in history, Slavic linguistics, and Czech literature.  Dr. Nakeeb completed her Ph.D. in 1972, and her dissertation was entitled The earliest Dostoevsky: style and meaning in his translation of “Eugénie Grandet”.  Much of Dr. Nakeeb’s research and publications throughout her career focused on the origins of Russian and other Slavic languages, and she also had a strong interest in translation and French literature.  Among the many honors that she received are: the “National Defense Foreign Language Fellowship”, the “Pushkin Prize for Russian Poetry Translation”, and the “New York State College Teaching Fellowship”.

Dr. Nakeeb spent nearly her entire career as a professor of Russian and French at Pace University, where she began as an adjunct in 1983.  From 1985 to 1999 she served as our language lab director, in addition to teaching, and in 2000 Dr. Nakeeb became a full-time lecturer in the Modern Languages Dept.  Throughout her career at Pace, Dr. Nakeeb taught all levels of Russian and French language, literature, culture, and film courses.  She was quite dedicated to curriculum development, created many innovative courses for our department, and established the Russian minor at Pace in 1993. She also enjoyed mentoring Pace students outside of class and often coached them on their contributions in Russian for the MOL Department journal, VOICES.

Dr. Nakeeb’s courses were popular with Pace students and often closed out. She enjoyed sharing her wealth of expertise and experience, taught with passion and creativity, and always strived to introduce cultural topics in every course to make language come alive for her students.  Another one of her main teaching objectives was to always make her course material relevant to her students.

In addition to Dr. Nakeeb’s excellent teaching and scholarship, she was a wonderful colleague and enthusiastic supporter of the Modern Languages Dept.  Following her retirement, she returned to teach once again at Pace as one of our adjuncts.  Dr. Nakeeb was very dedicated to the Modern Languages Department and Pace students from across the university for over three decades, and she will be missed dearly by all.

 Susan Berardini

Chair of MOL department

August 28, 2021.