Join Darra Goldstein, food scholar and author of 17 books, including A Taste of Russia and Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore for a conversation about Russian cuisine, cultural traditions, and the power of food to create community and forge positive social change. Moderated by U.S. Ambassador Laura Kennedy, a 40-year veteran of the foreign service, whose first overseas post was the US Embassy in Moscow in 1977-9.

About the guest speaker:

Darra Goldstein, the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita at Williams College, is the founding editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture. Under her editorship Gastronomica won multiple awards and was named the 2012 Publication of the Year by the James Beard Foundation.

Goldstein has published widely on food, literature, culture, and art and is the author of six award-winning cookbooks, including A Taste of Russia, The Georgian Feast (the 1994 IACP Julia Child Cookbook of the Year), and Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore. 

She has consulted for the Council of Europe to explore ways in which food can be used to promote tolerance and diversity. Awards include the Distinguished Fellow in Food Studies at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto and the Macgeorge Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. In 2020 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals and in 2022 was awarded the Sakh(e)lebi Prize for her contributions to Georgian culture. Goldstein currently sits on the advisory board of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts and is a member of the advisory “Kitchen Cabinet” for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

About the moderator:

A retired career US diplomat, Laura Kennedy’s first overseas post was the US Embassy in Moscow in 1977-9. That early assignments to Russia led to a specialization in the former Soviet Union as well as in arms control and nonproliferation. Her service as an exhibit guide with an official exchange exhibit in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan also sparked a career-long interest in Central Asia and cultural exchange. In addition to service in Russia, Armenia, Austria and Turkey, Kennedy was Ambassador to Turkmenistan and to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and Deputy Commandant of the National War College. Kennedy was appointed to Secretary Antony Blinken’s International Security Advisory Board in 2022. She is a founding Director of Foreign Policy 4 America, and also serves on Boards of the American Academy of Diplomacy, the Arms Control Association, the Deep Cuts Commission, the Leadership Council of Women in National Security and George Washington University’s Central Asia Program. She lectures, writes, and comments on foreign policy and leads groups to Central Asia for the Smithsonian Institution.

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