Interests
Religion, Social Theory, Psychological Anthropology; Sri Lanka, South India, Voyages of Discovery

Short Bio
Gananath Obeyesekere conducted fieldwork in Sri Lanka and India. He was most interested in psychoanalysis and anthropology, and the ways in which personal symbolism relates to religious experience. More recently, he was interested in European voyages of discovery to Polynesia in the eighteenth century and beyond, and the implications of these voyages for the development of ethnography. His books include Land Tenure in Village Ceylon, Medusa's Hair, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini, Buddhism Transformed (co-author), The Work of Culture, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, and Making Karma. Professor Obeyesekere has taught courses in psychoanalysis and anthropology, hermeneutics, social anthropology, and Buddhism.

Click here to read Gananath Obeyesekere's memorial.