About

The Anthropology Department at UC Santa Cruz features a highly productive faculty team, including Professor Mayanthi L Fernando, who is recognized for her research innovation and excellence in teaching. The department's faculty members are at the forefront of their fields, having received awards from organizations such as the Society of Medical Anthropology and the Society for Historical Archaeology. Professor Fernando's work contributes to the department's mission of fostering research and education in anthropology, supporting graduate students, and promoting engagement within the broader learning community.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Aesthetics
• History
• Epistemology
• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Gender studies
• Communication
• Archaeology
• Anthropology
• Environmental ethics
• Law

Selected publications

• Toward a Negative Zoology: Not-Knowing for a Post- Anthropocene Future

  transcript Verlag eBooks · 2023-09-26

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Toward a Negative Zoology: Not-Knowing for a Post- Anthropocene Future

  Edition Museum · 2023-09-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Rediscovering the “Everyday” Muslim. Notes on an Anthropological Divide

  State Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide · 2023 · 64 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Anthropology
  PublisherDOI

• Biographies of Contributors

  transcript Verlag eBooks · 2023-09-26

  book-chapterOpen access

  She is dedicated to re-claiming and re-introducing the ancient

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Uncanny Ecologies

  Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East · 2022 · 49 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Environmental ethics

  Abstract If secularity ushered in the notion of humans as buffered subjects immune to nonhuman agents, recent attempts to recognize the agency of nonhumans and to see humans as always in relation to nonhumans—the natureculture turn—may be understood as both a posthumanist and postsecularist project. Yet this scholarship has largely restricted nonhumans to entities previously classified as “natural” phenomena, leaving “supernatural” beings out of the conversation and leaving the distinction between nature and supernature intact. Fernando argues that fully undoing the nature/culture distinction means attending to this third domain—the more-than-natural—still banished from our ontological horizons. This is especially important for any consideration of the Anthropocene, since climate crisis affects communities that do not live only in secular worlds nor abide only by secular categories. The author therefore turns to South Asia to theorize what she calls uncanny ecologies—that is, interspecies webs of care and commitment among animals, humans, and deities. The author also asks why these nonsecular multispecies worlds have not been taken up as viable models of relationality and Anthropocene livability to the extent that Amerindian ontologies have, speculating that more-than-natural, more-than-human agency remains a problem for secular sensibilities.

  PublisherDOI

• Overture

  2021-10-10

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Overture. Trouillot Remixed

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2021 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• French secularism: a sustainable model?

  HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2020-01-01

  article

  International audience

  Publisher

• Critique as Care

  Critical Times · 2019-04-01 · 43 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Critique in translation

  Critical Research on Religion · 2019-05-16 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ian Baucom

  Musée de la Civilisation

  16 shared

• Emilie Girard

  University of Cape Town

  16 shared

• Nadia Fadil

  3 shared

• Mathilde Philip-Gay

  Université Jean Moulin Lyon III

  3 shared

• Greg Beckett

  Western University

  2 shared

• Sindre Bangstad

  Institute for Church, Religion, and Worldview Research

  2 shared

• Gil Anidjar

  Columbia University

  2 shared

• Yarimar Bonilla

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Weatherhead Fellow, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe,…
• Hellman Fellow, UC Santa Cruz (2011-12)
• Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ (2010-20…
• U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program (2010-2011)
• UC President's Faculty Fellowship (2010-2011)