Elizabeth is originally from St. Louis, MO and graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Honors College at Missouri State University with Bachelor’s degrees in Latin American Studies, Anthropology, and Spanish. She studied abroad in Guatemala in 2012 where she studied the effects of tourism on native communities, and returned to Guatemala in 2013 and 2014 to work with a women’s textile cooperative called Asociación Mayab’ Ixoqi’ and to help create a GPS map of San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala. Her senior honors thesis and Departmental Distinction projects in Latin American Studies and Anthropology at Missouri State University focused on iconography in ancient and modern Maya textiles and the concept of the nahualli and human-animal imagery in Mesoamerica, including the Inquisition’s prosecution of witchcraft, sorcery, idolatry, and nahualism (especially focusing on the prosecution of the Aztec people). At the Stone Center, Elizabeth pursued her M.A. with research interests including the study of iconography in Maya textiles through art historical and anthropological analysis of Maya culture, textiles, and epigraphy.
