Maxine Margolis

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Maxine L. Margolis is an American anthropologist and an inductee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and has been with the university since 1970. Margolis holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. Margolis received the BRASA Lifetime Contribution Award in 2014.^[1]

She was a student and then a colleague of Marvin Harris, and was one of those responsible for convincing him to leave Columbia University for the University of Florida in 1980. Margolis's work is strongly informed by Harris's anthropological research strategy, known as cultural materialism.

Margolis is the author of many books on anthropology, notably Little Brazil, True to Her Nature: Changing Advice to American Women, and An Invisible Minority: Brazilians in New York City.

With Martin F. Murphy she edited Science, Materialism, and the Study of Culture, the most comprehensive collection of writings by anthropologists strongly influenced by cultural materialism to date.

Margolis's research interests include gender, agriculture, Brazil and Brazilian immigrants to the United States. In December 2005 she was cited in a New York Times article Trading Status for a Raise, and appears in the companion piece, a New York Times video report " Brazil in Queens.

Margolis is married to archeologist Jerald T. Milanich and the mother of historian Nara Milanich.