Yale anthropologist Eduardo Fernandez-Duque conducts research that bridges the fields of evolutionary anthropology, psychology, and primatology — and his summer reading includes examinations of modern manhood that shed light on his own studies of primate families.
Fernandez-Duque is a professor of anthropology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with a secondary appointment at the Yale School of the Environment. He founded the Owl Monkey Project, a multi-disciplinary research site in the Argentinian Chaco.
Eduardo Fernandez-Duque
Is there anything you’re reading for your area of expertise?
Eduardo Fernandez-Duque: “Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives,” by psychologist Darby Saxbe and “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It,” by Richard Reeves. These books look at issues of masculinity and fatherhood in ways that are complementary to my research on the biological and evolutionary basis of pair bonding, monogamy, and committed fathers.
What’s your ‘beach read’ this summer?
Fernandez-Duque: “The Buddenbrooks,” by Thomas Mann.
Do you have a favorite book that you wish more people had read?
Fernandez-Duque: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.” So begins “On Bullshit,” a short 67-page essay published as a book the size of a small cell phone by Harry G. Frankfurt, an emeritus professor of philosophy [at Princeton University; he taught at Yale from 1976 to 1990]. If more frequently than you wish you find yourself trying to discern a liar from a bullshitter, this essay may help!
