Covering the Land of Lincoln

Obituary: Dara Goldman

Dara Goldman of Urbana, Illinois, formerly of Montclair, a professor of Spanish literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, died on May 13, 2022. She was 51.

Professor Goldman was raised in Montclair and attended Montclair Kimberley Academy, graduating in 1988.

She earned a BA and MA from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Emory University.

At the University of Illinois, she was a positive force for research and collaboration. Professor Goldman was connected to numerous campus units and helped form many initiatives to promote dialogue between communities on campus.

In 2008 she published “Out of Bounds: Islands and the Demarcation of Identity in the Hispanic Caribbean (Bucknell Studies Latin American Literature and Theory).”

More recently, she co-edited a volume of American literary history, “Twenty-First Century Jewish Writing and the World.”

In addition to being a great scholar, she loved dancing, skiing, science fiction and romantic comedies.

Professor Goldman was gracious and kind to all, an amazing wife, daughter (-in-law), aunt, sister and friend who was likely to take a picture or send an article she read because she was thinking of you.

She is survived by her husband, Itai Segev; her parents, Karen and Clifford Goldman; her sister, Elissa; her sister-in-law, Michal Lerner; her nieces and nephew, Shira, Elle and Elan; her brother-in-law, Guy Segev; her husband’s parents, Joram and Varda Segev, and many heartbroken friends, colleagues and students.

A graveside service and interment will be held on Thursday, May 19, at 2 pm in the Jewish section of Mount Hope Cemetery in Champaign, Illinois.

A memorial service and shiva will be held immediately after, at 3 pm at the Cohen Center for Jewish Life (Illini Hillel) at 503 E. John St., Champaign, IL 61820.

The Zoom link for the graveside service will be available later at the Hillel website, illinihillel.org/dara.

The Zoom link for the memorial service is hillel.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqde-qqzwoEtD9zvsY_ei0Fr4n4QzJBVwr.

The family will be holding shiva and receiving guests at the Cohen Center for Jewish Life on Friday, May 20, from 10 am to 2 pm and Sunday, May 22, with the exact time to be announced on Hillel’s website.

To protect its most vulnerable members, the family kindly asks that those coming to the memorial or shiva at Hillel wear masks.

The Goldman family will be holding a Zoom shiva in New Jersey on May 22, 23 and 24 at 6:30 pm The Zoom link for that event is us02web.zoom.us/j/86353788787.

The family will be setting up a scholarship memorial fund in her memory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In lieu of flowers contributions can be made to the fund when it has been set up. The website for the scholarship fund is professordaragoldman.com.

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