Donna M. Goldstein
- Professor
- (PH.D.
- U. OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
- 1994)

Professor Goldstein, who 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 acclaimed , and winner of the 2005 Margaret Mead award for her contributions to public anthropology. Laughter Out of Place focuses on the lives of impoverished domestic workers living in Rio de Janeiro鈥檚 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. She is currently leading a collaborative and interdisciplinary research project with colleagues at the Get煤lio Vargas Foundation in Brazil and at CU. The 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 Sciences (2012-2016) where she worked on the initiative 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 the . One initiative is titled, and the second is titled, .
Professor Goldstein is one of the founders of the at CU and currently serves as its Director (2014-2015).
Selected Publications:
- 2022 鈥擥oldstein, Donna M. and Kristen Drybread, eds., Corruption and Illiberal Politics in the Trump Era, London: Routledge Press.
- 2017a鈥擥oldstein, Donna M. "Fieldnote as Political Weapon: James Comey鈥檚 Ethnographic Turn?." Dispatches, Cultural Anthropology website, June 22, 2017..
- 2017b鈥擥oldstein, Donna M. for edited volume titled, These 鈥楾hin Partitions鈥: Bridging the Growing Divide between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology, Joshua Englehardt and Ivy Rieger, eds, 色戒成人直播, Co: University Press of Colorado, pp. 253-267.
- 2017c鈥擥oldstein, Donna M. Special Issue: Catastrophic Asia Journal of Asian Studies 76(2) (May), pp. 481-497.
- 2017d鈥擥oldstein, Donna M. and Kira Hall. in Goldstein and Hall, eds. HAU Colloquium titled, 鈥淔rom Candidacy to Governance: Rethinking 鈥楾he Hands of Donald Trump鈥,鈥 HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7(1), pp. 397-406.
- 2016a鈥擥oldstein, Donna M. The Reappeared: Argentine Former Political Prisoners. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014, American Anthropologist, 118, (1), March 2016, 208-9.
- 2016b鈥擧all, Kira, Goldstein, Donna M. and Matthew Ingram. 鈥淭he Hands of Donald Trump: Entertainment, Gesture, Spectacle,鈥&苍产蝉辫; 6(2)71-100.
- 2015a 鈥擥oldstein, Donna M. and Kira Hall. American Ethnologist 42.4: 640-657.
- 2015b鈥擥oldstein, Donna M. and Stawkowksi, Magdalena E. Journal of the History of Biology (2015) 48:67-98.
- 2014a 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. Book Review of Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer鈥檚 . Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. American Ethnologist 41.1, pp. 213-214.
- 2014b 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. 鈥Toxic uncertainties of the nuclear era: Anthropology, history, memoir,鈥 American Ethnologist, Volume 41, No. 3, August 2014, pp. 579-584.
- 2013a 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. Book Review of Angela Garcia鈥檚 . Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010. American Ethnologist 40.4, pp. 805-807.
- 2013b 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. Book review of Michael J. Montoya鈥檚 . Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011. American Ethnologist 40.1, pp. 232-233.
- 2013c 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. 鈥Nancy Scheper-Hughes.鈥 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 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. 鈥Preface to the 2013 Edition,鈥 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 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. 鈥Experimentalit茅: Pharmaceutical Insights Into Anthropology鈥檚 Epistemologically Fractured Self.鈥 In: Susan Levine, ed. Medicine and the Politics of Knowledge. Cape Town, South Africa: HSRC, 2012, pp. 118-151.
- 2012b 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. 鈥How Corruption Kills: Pharmaceutical Crime, Mediated Representations, and Middle-Class Anxiety in Neoliberal Argentina.鈥 Vol. 24, No. 2, City and Society, pp. 218-239.
- 2012c 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. Book Review of Roberto Abadie鈥檚 The Professional Guinea Pig: Big Pharma and the Risky World of Human Subjects. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2010. American Ethnologist 39.4, pp. 835-6.
- 2012d 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. Book Review of Alexander Edmonds鈥 Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2010. American Ethnologist, 39.3, pp. 627-8.
- 2009 鈥 Goldstein, Donna. 鈥The Perils of Witnessing and the Ambivalence of Writing: Everyday Violence in the Shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro,鈥 In: Martha K. Huggins and Marie-Louise Glebbeek, eds., Women Fielding Danger: Negotiating Ethnographic Identities in Field Research. 色戒成人直播 and New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., pp. 227-249.
- 2008 鈥 Goldstein, Donna. Book Review of Desmond Arias鈥 Drugs and Democracy in Rio De Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security, Contemporary Sociology 37(6): 578-9.
- 2007a 鈥 Goldstein, Donna. 鈥Life or Profit?: Structural Violence, Moral Psychology, and Pharmaceutical Politics.鈥&苍产蝉辫;Anthropology in Action, vol. 14, No. 3, Winter 2007. In Special Issue titled, 鈥淭he Location of Culture and Politics in Latin American and Caribbeanist Anthropology,鈥 pp. 44-58.
- 2007b 鈥 Goldstein, Donna. 鈥Gun Politics: Reflections on Brazil鈥檚 Failed Gun Ban Referendum in Rio de Janeiro,鈥 In: Charles Fruehling Springwood, ed., Open Fire: Understanding Global Gun Cultures, Oxford, England: Berg, pp. 28-41.
- 2003 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. . 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-色戒成人直播 2006-7).
- 2001 鈥 Goldstein, Donna. 鈥Microenterprise Training Programs, Neo-Liberal Common Sense, and the Discourses of Self-Esteem.鈥 In: Judith Goode and Jeff Maskovsky, eds. The New Poverty Studies: The Ethnography of Politics, Policy and Impoverished People in the United States. New York: New York University Press, 236-272.
- 2000 鈥 Debert, Guita and Donna M. Goldstein, eds. Pol铆ticas do corpo e o curso da vida. (trans. Body Politics and the Life Course) S茫o Paulo, Brazil: Editora Sumar茅.
- 1999 鈥 Goldstein, Donna M. 鈥鈥業nterracial鈥 Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin Concepts?鈥&苍产蝉辫;American Anthropologist 101 (3): 563-578
Graduate Studies Information
Projects and Research
- Pharmaceutical politics
- Bioethics
- Regulation
- Neoliberalism in Argentina and the United States
- Cold War science and the history of nuclear energy in Brazil