Rebecca Goldstein

Infobox Person


image_size = 150px
name=Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
birth_name=Rebecca Newberger
birth_date=bda|1950|02|23
right|framed|Rebecca Goldstein
nationality=American
occupation=Novelist
Philosopher
academic affiliation=Harvard

Rebecca Goldstein (born 1950) is an American novelist and professor of philosophy. She has written five novels, a number of short stories and essays, and biographical studies of mathematician Kurt Gödel and philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

Life and career

Goldstein, born Rebecca Newberger, grew up in White Plains, New York, and did her undergraduate work at Barnard College. She was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. She has one older brother who is an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and a younger sister. After earning her Ph.D. from Princeton University, she returned to Barnard to teach courses in various philosophical studies. Here she published her first novel, "The Mind-Body Problem" (1983), a serio-comic tale of the conflict between emotion and intelligence, combined with an examination of Jewish tradition and identity. Goldstein said she wrote the book to "...insert 'real life' intimately into the intellectual struggle. In short I wanted to write a philosophically motivated novel." [cite web|url=http://www.rebeccagoldstein.com/Goldstein_bio.htm|title=Rebecca Goldstein web site|accessdate=2006-11-07]

Her second novel, "The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind" (1989), was also set in academia, though with a far darker tone. Her third novel, "The Dark Sister" (1993), was something of a departure: a postmodern fictionalization of family and professional issues in the life of William James. "Mazel" followed in 1995. Her latest novel, "Properties of Light" (2000), is a ghost story about love, betrayal, and quantum physics. Goldstein has published a collection of short stories, "Strange Attractors" (1993), that also treated "interactions of thought and feeling," to quote the cover jacket.

Recently Goldstein has turned to biography with her books "Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel" (2005) and "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity" (2006). The books reflect her continuing interests in the relationship between the life of the mind and the demands of everyday existence, and in Jewish perspectives and history.

In addition to Barnard, Goldstein has taught at Columbia and Rutgers. She has been a visiting scholar at Brandeis University, and taught for five years as a visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Goldstein lives in Boston and Truro. She is married [http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/profile/story/0,,2285952,00.html] to Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker. She is the mother of novelist Yael Goldstein and poet Danielle Goldstein.

Awards and fellowships

* Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, 2006-2007
* Guggenheim Fellow, 2006-2007
* Koret International Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought, [http://www.koretfoundation.org/] 2006, for "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity"
* MacArthur Fellow, 1996
* National Jewish Book Award, 1995, for "Mazel"
* Edward Lewis Wallant Award, 1995, for "Mazel"
* National Jewish Book Award for her book of short stories, "Strange Attractors"
* Graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, receiving the Montague Prize for Excellence in Philosophy,
* While at Princeton University, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship
* Whiting Foundation Fellowship, 1991cite web |url=http://www.rebeccagoldstein.com/Goldstein_bio.htm |title=Rebecca Newberger Goldstein bio |accessdate=2007-09-12]

Notes

External links

* [http://www.rebeccagoldstein.com/ Rebecca Goldstein web site]
* [http://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/rebecca_goldstein.htm Interview, April 11, 2006]
* [http://calitreview.com/Interviews/goldstein_8028.htm An interview with Rebecca Goldstein, about her book "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity"] "California Literary Review, June 4, 2006"
* [http://edge.org/3rd_culture/goldstein06/goldstein06_index.html "Reasonable Doubt": an essay on Baruch Spinoza on Edge.org]
* [http://www.jewcy.com/dialogue/03-17/a_kibitz_on_pure_reason?page=0 "A Kibitz on Pure Reason": A three-day dialogue on "Betraying Spinoza" between Rebecca Goldstein and Michael Weiss.] "Jewcy.com, March 17-19, 2007."