Donna M.ÌýGoldstein
- Professor
- Department Chair
- (PH.D.
- U. OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
- 1994)

HALE 445
Mondays 3-5, Zoom and by appointment.
Professor Goldstein,Ìýwho joined the CU faculty in 1994, received her B.S. in Rural Sociology from Cornell University, Ed.M., Psychology from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Goldstein has written extensively on the intersection of race, gender, poverty and violence in Brazil. She is the author of the critically acclaimedÌý, and winner of the 2005 Margaret Mead award for her contributions to public anthropology.ÌýLaughter Out of PlaceÌýfocuses on the lives of impoverished domestic workers living in Rio de Janeiro’s infamous shantytowns who cope with unbearable suffering, violence, and social abandonment. The book came out in with a New Preface in 2013.
Currently, Professor Goldstein is working on a series of interconnected projects within medical anthropology and the anthropology of science. She is writing about pharmaceutical politics and neoliberalism in Argentina and the United States, and is investigating the history of genetics, Cold War science, the health of populations, and the future of nuclear energy in Brazil. ÌýShe is currently leading a collaborative and interdisciplinary research project with colleagues at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Brazil and at CU. ÌýThe team is investigating issues related to the health of populations living proximate to the Angra nuclear complex in Brazil.
Professor Goldstein served as Director of the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social SciencesÌýÌý(2012-2016) where she worked on the initiativeÌý and other initiatives to support research in the social sciences at CU. She is one of the founders of the and is currently serving as the Director. as where she is organizing two new initiatives on theÌý. One initiative is titled,ÌýÌýand the second is titled,Ìý.
Professor Goldstein is one of the founders of the at CU and currently serves as its Director (2014-2015).
Selected Publications:
- 2022 —Goldstein, Donna M. and Kristen Drybread, eds.,ÌýCorruption and Illiberal Politics in the TrumpÌýEra,ÌýLondon: Routledge Press.
- 2017a—Goldstein, Donna M.Ìý"Fieldnote as Political Weapon: James Comey’s Ethnographic Turn?."ÌýDispatches, Cultural Anthropology website, June 22, 2017..
- 2017b—Goldstein, Donna M. for edited volume titled,ÌýThese ‘Thin Partitions’: Bridging the Growing Divide between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology, Joshua Englehardt and Ivy Rieger, eds, °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï, Co: University Press of Colorado, pp. 253-267.
- 2017c—Goldstein, Donna M.Ìý ÌýSpecial Issue: Catastrophic AsiaÌýJournal of Asian StudiesÌýÌý76(2) (May), pp. 481-497.
- 2017d—Goldstein, Donna M. and Kira Hall.ÌýÌýin Goldstein and Hall, eds. HAU Colloquium titled, “From Candidacy to Governance: Rethinking ‘The Hands of Donald Trump’,â€�ÌýHAU: Journal of Ethnographic TheoryÌý7(1), pp. 397-406.
- 2016a—Goldstein, Donna M.Ìý The Reappeared: Argentine Former Political Prisoners. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014, American Anthropologist, 118, (1), March 2016, 208-9.
- 2016b—Hall, Kira,ÌýGoldstein, Donna M.Ìýand Matthew Ingram. “The Hands of Donald Trump: Entertainment, Gesture, Spectacle,â€�Ìý 6(2)71-100.
- 2015aÌý —Goldstein, Donna M. and Kira Hall. American Ethnologist 42.4: 640-657.
- 2015b—Goldstein, Donna M. and Stawkowksi, Magdalena E. Journal of the History of Biology (2015) 48:67-98.
- 2014a – Goldstein, Donna M. ÌýBook Review of Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer’s . ÌýMinneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. ÌýAmerican Ethnologist 41.1, pp. 213-214.
- 2014b – Goldstein, Donna M. “Toxic uncertainties of the nuclear era: Anthropology, history, memoir,� American Ethnologist, Volume 41, No. 3, August 2014, pp. 579-584.
- 2013a – Goldstein, Donna M. ÌýBook Review of Angela Garcia’s . ÌýBerkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010. ÌýAmerican Ethnologist 40.4, pp. 805-807.
- 2013b – Goldstein, Donna M.ÌýBook review of Michael J. Montoya’sÌý.ÌýBerkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011.ÌýAmerican EthnologistÌý40.1, pp. 232-233.
- 2013c – Goldstein, Donna M. Ìý“Nancy Scheper-Hughes.â€� In: R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. The Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Theory: An Encyclopedia. London: Sage Publications, pp. 756-758.
- 2013d – Goldstein, Donna M. “Preface to the 2013 Edition,� Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. xix-xxxv.
- 2012a – Goldstein, Donna M. “Experimentalité: Pharmaceutical Insights Into Anthropology’s Epistemologically Fractured Self.â€� In: Susan Levine, ed.ÌýMedicine and the Politics of Knowledge. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC, 2012, pp. 118-151.
- 2012b – Goldstein, Donna M. “How Corruption Kills: Pharmaceutical Crime, Mediated Representations, and Middle-Class Anxiety in Neoliberal Argentina.â€� Vol. 24, No. 2,ÌýCity and Society, pp. 218-239.
- 2012c – Goldstein, Donna M.ÌýBook Review of Roberto Abadie’sÌýThe Professional Guinea Pig: Big Pharma and the Risky World of Human Subjects.ÌýDurham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2010.ÌýAmerican EthnologistÌý39.4, pp. 835-6.
- 2012d – Goldstein, Donna M.ÌýBook Review of Alexander Edmonds’ÌýPretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil.ÌýDurham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2010.ÌýAmerican Ethnologist, 39.3, pp. 627-8.
- 2009 – Goldstein, Donna. “The Perils of Witnessing and the Ambivalence of Writing: Everyday Violence in the Shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro,â€� In: Martha K. Huggins and Marie-Louise Glebbeek, eds.,ÌýWomen Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic Identities in Field Research. °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï and New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., pp. 227-249.
- 2008 – Goldstein, Donna.ÌýBook Review of Desmond Arias’ÌýDrugs and Democracy in Rio De Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security, Contemporary SociologyÌý37(6): 578-9.
- 2007a – Goldstein, Donna. “Life or Profit?: Structural Violence, Moral Psychology, and Pharmaceutical Politics.â€�ÌýAnthropology in Action, vol. 14, No. 3, Winter 2007. In Special Issue titled, “The Location of Culture and Politics in Latin American and Caribbeanist Anthropology,â€� pp. 44-58.
- 2007b – Goldstein, Donna. “Gun Politics: Reflections on Brazil’s Failed Gun Ban Referendum in Rio de Janeiro,â€� In: Charles Fruehling Springwood, ed.,ÌýOpen Fire: Understanding Global Gun Cultures, Oxford, England: Berg, pp. 28-41.
- 2003 – Goldstein, Donna M.Ìý. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. (Winner of the Margaret Mead Award, Society for Applied Anthropology and American Anthropological Association 2004, Eaton Faculty Award, CU-°Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï 2006-7).
- 2001 – Goldstein, Donna. “Microenterprise Training Programs, Neo-Liberal Common Sense, and the Discourses of Self-Esteem.â€� In: Judith Goode and Jeff Maskovsky, eds.ÌýThe New Poverty Studies: The Ethnography of Politics, Policy and Impoverished People in the United States. New York: New York University Press, 236-272.
- 2000 – Debert, Guita and Donna M. Goldstein, eds.ÌýPolÃticas do corpo e o curso da vida. (trans.ÌýBody Politics and the Life Course) São Paulo, Brazil: Editora Sumaré.
- 1999 – Goldstein, Donna M. “‘Interracial’ Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin Concepts?â€�ÌýAmerican AnthropologistÌý101 (3): 563-578
Graduate Studies Information
Projects and ResearchÌý
- Pharmaceutical politics
- Bioethics
- Regulation
- Neoliberalism in Argentina and the United States
- Cold War science and the history of nuclear energy in Brazil