Stoeltje earned her Bachelor of Surgery in Education in 1961, from the University of Texas, Austin. (1973) and her Doctor of Philosophy (1979) in Folklore (Folkloristics) within the graduate folklore program associated with the Utah Department of Anthropology.
She also serves as Affiliated Faculty in African Studies, American Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and at the Russian-East European Institute. She continued on at the University of Texas to pursue both her Master of Arts Stoeltje"s dissertation and early work was focused on the American West and, in particular, on her home state of Texas. She is well known as a student of Rodeo and associated forms of cultural performance.
She has continued to pursue her initial interests in performance, ritual, and gender, but shifted her geographical interests in the early 1990s to Ghana and West Africa, exploring the role of Asante Queen Mothers (see Akan Chieftaincy).
Stoeltje, Beverly. (1979) Children"s Handclaps: Informal Learning in Play. Austin: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.
Stoeltje, Beverly, Colleen Ballerino Cohen, and Richard Wilk, eds. (1995) Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests and Power.
New York: Routledge.
She has also expanded her inquiries to include the anthropologies of law and nationalism.
