Crossing the boundaries between intellectual history, philosophy, and literary studies, her research focuses on the ways modernity and modern subjectivity have been represented, understood, and experienced in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and German literature and culture. Goodstein received her BA in Ideas and Methods from the University of Chicago and studied at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität in Tübingen, before receiving her MA and PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. A former Rotary Scholar, Goodstein was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in 2002–2003. Her book Experience without Qualities: Boredom and Modernity (Stanford, 2005), was awarded both the Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book and the German Studies Association/DAAD Book Prize.