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PUBLICATIONS & LECTURES
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Biography of Nicole Sault
Nicole Sault is a cultural anthropologist whose research has
focused on kinship and gender among the indigenous peoples
of Mesoamerica. Her major fieldwork is with the Zapotec of
Oaxaca, in southeastern Mexico. More recently, she has been
doing research on the symbolic attributes of birds among
indigenous cultures of the Americas. In Costa Rica, Peru,
and California, she has been studying the ethno-ornithology
of condors, vultures, macaws, and hummingbirds. Through
their beliefs and practices about birds, each of these
societies teaches us about relationship to the world and our
obligations for reciprocity.
While studying Zapotec rites of passage and other rituals,
such as the use of incense and the sweathouse (temazcal), she became
increasingly interested in how different cultures
conceptualize the human body. This theoretical effort is
reflected in the publication of Many Mirrors: Body
Image and Social Relations (Rutgers University Press, 1994).
In the book’s Introduction and her chapter on contrasting
views of motherhood, she examines the history of the
fragmentation of the body into parts, as well as the
relationship between body image and parenthood in Mexico and
the United States.
Her interest in body image and whole persons eventually led
her to investigate the meaning of cosmetic surgery and
breast implants, as well as the politics of food in relation
to body image, globalization, and sustainable agriculture in
Mexico, Costa Rica, and the U.S.A.
Nicole Sault has published and presented on a variety of
anthropological topics, including godmothers, water
symbolism, the evil eye, religious conversion, peace
mediators, community supported agriculture, and the cultural
context for “natural disasters.”
A popular teacher, Dr. Sault has given courses in
Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, and Women’s Studies at Santa
Clara University in California. Later she taught
anthropology in the Masters Program at the University of
Costa Rica, where she also advised students on their
graduate theses. She is fluent in English and Spanish,
as well as conversant in Zapotec.
She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University
of California at Los Angeles and her B.A. from the
University of California at Santa Barbara, where she
graduated cum laude in Anthropology and English, and Phi
Beta Kappa. She is proud to be a recipient of the Sisterhood
is Powerful award from the Women’s Studies Program at Santa
Clara University and a recipient of a Fulbright-Hayes
Doctoral Research Scholarship.
Courses Taught in
Anthropology:
Family and Kinship
Women and Men in Society
Body Image in Cultural Context
Indigenous Peoples of Mesoamerica
Anthropology of Native Americans (in the United States)
Medical Anthropology
Anthropology of Aging
Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology
Antropología del cuerpo (Anthropology of the Body)
Técnicas de investigación (Research Methods)
Courses Taught in Ethnic
Studies:
Introduction to Ethnic Studies
Introduction to Native American Cultures (in the United
States)
Native Peoples of Mexico and the United States
Reviewer for Journals:
Agriculture and Human Values
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Journal of the History of Sexuality
Sociological Perspectives
Cuadernos de Antropologia Universidad de Costa RIca
Reviewer for Book
Manuscripts:
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Press
University of California Press
Greenwood Publishing Group |
