Cari Costanzo, Ph.D.
About
Cari Costanzo is a Cultural Anthropologist who helps individuals unfold their stories. Integrating her work as an ethnographer and an Academic Director, Cari designs Body Map workshops that combine cultural awareness with artistic and contemplative practices to encourage the reframing and reclaiming of embodied experiences, enabling participants to both reflect upon and creatively share their life stories. Cari’s research, writing, and teaching focus on ritual, embodiment, and identity formation in contemporary society, looking closely at the cultural construction of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in India, Hawaii, and on the Stanford campus. Cari is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, as well as the Thinking Matters and LifeWorks Programs at Stanford University. She has also taught undergraduate and graduate students in the d.school’s Life Design Lab, served on the launch team of the Stanford Resilience Project, and is a founding member of Gender Inclusive Stanford. Cari is a recipient of the Centennial Teaching Award for outstanding pedagogical innovations in the classroom. From 2010-2015 Cari served as a Resident Fellow, living in an all-freshman dormitory with her two children, where she blended formal and informal learning to facilitate intellectual curiosity and personal growth among the 99 residents of Twain Hall. Cari earned a BA in Comparative Literature from USC, an MA in the MAPSS Program at the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Stanford University.