Darra Goldstein

Darra Goldstein (born April 28, 1951) is an American author and food scholar who is the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, emerita at Williams College.

She is the founding editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, which won the 2012 James Beard award for Publication of the Year, and she served as its editor-in-chief from 2001 to 2012. She also served as editor-in-chief of the short-lived magazine CURED from Zero Point Zero Production. Goldstein is the author of six award-winning cookbooks, most recently Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore, which topped the list of Best Summer Cookbooks 2020 in The New York Times Book Review.

Goldstein is also the founding series editor for California Studies in Food and Culture and from 2002 to 2016 was the food editor for Russian Life magazine. She has served on a number of culinary diplomacy programs including as Cultural Envoy from the U.S. Department of State to the Republic of Georgia (in 2013) and as a consultant on food and diversity for the Council of Europe (from 2002 to 2005) along with other USAID and Council of Europe culinary projects.

Goldstein has been honored as both a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Food Studies at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto and as a MacGeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Personal life and education

Goldstein currently resides in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband, Dean Crawford, a writer and professor of English, emeritus at Vassar College. They have one daughter, Leila.

Goldstein grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the middle child of Irving S. and Helen Haft Goldstein. Her father was an organic chemist who specialized in wood and paper science. Goldstein's love of food stems from her mother who, in her words, “loved to cook.” Her mother won numerous cooking contests and was a finalist in the 1968 Pillsbury Bake-Off. Her mother even won a contest sponsored by King Arthur Sardines with a recipe for sardine and cream cheese dip. The prize included a pewter bowl, which Goldstein still has to this day, and a hundred cans of sardines, which Goldstein remembers receiving in care packages while she was a student at Vassar College. There she studied Russian, German and French. She graduated from Vassar in 1973. Goldstein's grandmother never shared stories about her childhood since Russia was intolerant of Jews at the time, but Goldstein's curiosity about her grandmother's past led her to start studying the Russian language as a freshman at Vassar.

During graduate school, she was research assistant to Bertram D. Wolfe, a founder of the American Communist Party who by the end of his life had become a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. Goldstein took a year off from graduate study in 1978–1979 to work for the USIA in the Soviet Union, touring with the exhibition "Agriculture USA."

Early career: Russian art, culture and cuisine

Goldstein's academic career began in Russian literature with her Stanford Ph.D. dissertation on Zabolotsky, which was later published by Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature as a book entitled Nikolai Zabolotsky: Play for Mortal Stakes. She spent her early academic career studying Russian modernist poetry, and she wrote a number of articles on and gave academic talks about Russian poets and artists such as Zabolotsky and Pavel Filonov.

Russian art Goldstein pursued her interest in Russian art after Milo Beach, then chair of the art department at Williams College, encouraged her to apply for a Mellon Grant. This research also inspired a course she taught for many years at Williams, "Twentieth Century Russian Art and the Birth of Abstraction," which investigated Russian art within a cultural framework and explored the relationship between artistic production and politics.

Russian literature and cuisine As Goldstein read Russian literature at Vassar and Stanford, she became interested in how food was used to describe scenes and characters. When she first arrived at Williams College as an assistant professor of Russian in 1983 to teach courses on Russian language and literature, she also published her first cookbook, A La Russe: A Cookbook of Russian Hospitality (reissued as A Taste of Russia), which was nominated for a Tastemaker Award. Following the book's positive reception, Goldstein redirected her academic research towards food studies.

1990s and 2000s Goldstein's career bourgeoned in the 1990s and 2000s. She founded the acclaimed journal Gastronomica in 2001. She also consulted for the Russian Tea Room, organized several museum exhibitions, and published numerous books and exhibition catalogues. Goldstein also advised the restaurant team about Russian culture and investigated bakeries around New York City to find one that could produce the dense, dark sourdough bread needed for a Russian meal. Goldstein believes that “food can be a wonderful tool to promote understanding, but too often it’s used divisively, as a source of conflict instead of sharing.” In the fall of 2016, Goldstein was named a Macgeorge Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

In the spring of 2017, Goldstein retired from her professorship at Williams College, becoming the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, emerita. At the 2017 Williams College Commencement, President Adam Falk said the following of Goldstein: "You introduced students to the language, literature, and intellectual history of Russia, providing many of them a rich, immersive experience of post-Soviet Georgia. And at the same time, you turned your lifelong passion for food into a glorious, multi-course feast. More than mere fuel, food, you have shown, both conveys and develops culture as much as do art, literature, and music."

CURED Magazine

In the fall of 2016, Goldstein launched CURED, a biannual magazine from Zero Point Zero Production; CURED, according to Goldstein, was the first periodical to explore how age-old methods like salting, pickling, and fermenting inform the way we think about and consume food today.

Cookbooks

Goldstein broadened her scholarship by publishing Fire and Ice (2015), a cookbook of classic Nordic home cooking that was nominated for awards in 2016 by both the IACP and the James Beard Foundation.

Also in 2015, Goldstein published the 900-page The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, for which she served as editor-in-chief. With nearly 600 entries contributed by 265 writers from across the globe, the volume explores the long history of sugar, ranging from sugar's dark past in slavery to its use in medical studies to candies found around the world. It also received a James Beard Foundation nomination.

In 2020, Goldstein published Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore, a cookbook that explores the "true heart of Russian food"––home cooking from pickles to preserves, infused vodka to hand pies. The cookbook was named on many Best of 2020 lists, including lists from The New York Times, and Esquire Magazine. Goldstein articulates the cookbook's aim as follows: "I wanted to immerse myself in the Russian land and remember and reflect on what it gave to people. This is a place with a short growing season and long winter, but there are absolute riches in the waters. There are mushrooms and berries with flavors we can’t even begin to imagine because ours don’t get that same midnight sun. I wanted to go back to elemental foods and connect with the land."

Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture

Goldstein credits an article she published in 1995 as the impetus for creating Gastronomica. In a 2020 interview, Goldstein said this article remains one of her favorite pieces she's ever written.

Goldstein stepped down as editor-in-chief of Gastronomica at the end of 2012 when the University of California Press decided to cut its production budget. Publication of the Year, James Beard Foundation, for Gastronomica, 2012. Best Food Magazine in the World, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, Paris, for Gastronomica, 2011. UTNE Independent Press Nomination for Social/Cultural Coverage, for Gastronomica, 2011. Best Food Literature Book, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, for The Gastronomica Reader, 2010. AAP/PSP PROSE award (American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence) for Best Design in Print (Journals Category), for Gastronomica, 2009. UTNE Independent Press Nomination for Social/Cultural Coverage and for Best Writing, for Gastronomica, 2009. Nominee, IACP award for best cookbook, compilations category, 2008 (for Baking Boot Camp) Saveur 100, for Gastronomica, 2008. UTNE Independent Press Award for Social/Cultural Coverage, for Gastronomica, 2007. Honorable Mention for Outstanding Exhibition Catalogue of 2006 for Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500-2005, American Association of Art Museum Curators, 2007. UTNE Independent Press Nomination for Social/Cultural Coverage, for Gastronomica, 2005. Prix d’Argent for Culinary Cultures of Europe, Gourmet Voice World Food Media Festival, 2006. Best Culinary History Book, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, for Culinary Cultures of Europe, 2005. Prix d’Or for Gastronomica, Gourmet Voice World Food Media Festival, 2004. Finalist, M.F.K. Fisher Award, Les Dames d’Escoffier. 2002. Jacob's Creek World Food Media Awards. Bronze medal, “Best Food Magazine” (for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture). 2001. Sophie Coe Subsidiary Prize in Food History, the Oxford Symposium on Food History (for "Is Hay Only for Horses? Highlights of Russian Vegetarianism at the Turn of the Century"). 1997. IACP Julia Child Award for Best Cookbook of the Year 1993 (for The Georgian Feast). Also awarded Best International Cookbook. 1994.