Ernestine Friedl (August 13, 1920 – October 12, 2015) was an American anthropologist, author, and professor.
She served as the president of both the
American Ethnological Society
The American Ethnological Society (AES) is the oldest professional anthropological association in the United States.
History of the American Ethnological Society
Albert Gallatin and John Russell Bartlett founded the American Ethnological Societ ...
(1967) and the
American Anthropological Association (1974–1975). Friedl was also the first female Dean of Arts and Sciences and Trinity College at
Duke University, and was a James B. Duke Professor Emerita. A building on Duke's campus, housing the departments of African and African American Studies, Cultural Anthropology, the Latino/Latina Studies program, and Literature was named in her honor in 2008.
Her major interests included gender roles, rural life in modern Greece, and the
St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin.
Early life
Born in
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...
in 1920, Ernestine Friedl emigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of two years. They settled in the
West Bronx
The West Bronx is a region in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The region lies west of the Bronx River and roughly corresponds to the western half of the borough.
The West Bronx is more densely populated than the East Bronx, and is close ...
neighborhood of New York City.
Her father had been a railway functionary in Hungary but in the U.S. became a salesman, while her mother was a garment worker.
Education
Friedl attended
Hunter College, a public women's college in the Upper East Side of New York, from which she graduated in 1941 with a Bachelor of Arts in pre-social work.
Friedl went to graduate school at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
from 1941 to 1950, earning a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1950.
Influences
While in attendance at Hunter College, Friedl met three influential figures in her life:
Dorothy L. Keur and
Elsie Steedman, both professors of anthropology who taught and inspired Friedl to pursue the same field, as well as her future husband Harry Levy, who studied classics. It was Levy who encouraged Friedl to continue on with post-graduate studies in order to become an anthropologist. Other influences include Columbia professors
Ralph Linton
Ralph Linton (27 February 1893 – 24 December 1953) was an American anthropologist of the mid-20th century, particularly remembered for his texts ''The Study of Man'' (1936) and ''The Tree of Culture'' (1955). One of Linton's major contributio ...
and
Ruth Benedict
Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist.
She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College, and graduated in 1909. After studying anthropology at the New School of Social Re ...
.
Fieldwork
In 1942 and 1943, under the tutelage of Columbia professor Ralph Linton, Friedl studied the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin. She published a dissertation concerning the Chippewa political organization and leadership. After receiving her Ph.D. at Columbia, she and her husband Harry Levy traveled to Greece in 1954 where they engaged in anthropological fieldwork. She had been awarded a Fulbright grant to study life in a Greek village Vasilika, a small agricultural town with a population of 216 people. She returned to the area from 1964 to 1965 to do fieldwork with migrants. In 1971 and 1972, Friedl and Levy spent time in
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
working on her book ''Women and Men,'' which is when Friedl's interest in gender roles began.
Career
Friedl began teaching in at
Brooklyn College in the fall of 1942. Other than a brief intermittent stint at
Wellesley College and some courses taught at Queens College, she continued teaching at Brooklyn College until 1973 when she became a professor of anthropology at Duke University. She was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
in 1976.
While at Duke, she was the chair of the Department of Anthropology from 1973 to 1978, and the Dean of Arts and Sciences and Trinity College from 1980 to 1985.
She served as the secretary and later the president of the American Ethnological Society in 1967. In 1970, Friedl participated in the Committee on the Status of Women in Anthropology as part of the American Anthropological Association, later serving as its president from 1974 to 1975.
Notable published works
*1956 "Persistence in Chippewa Culture and Personality." ''American Anthropologist'' 58: 814–215.
*1959 "The Role of Kinship in the Transmission of National Culture to Rural Villages in Mainland Greece." ''American Anthropologist'' 61: 30–38.
*1962 ''Vasilika: A Village in Modern Greece''. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
*1963 "Studies in Peasant Life." ''Biennial Review of Anthropology''. B Siegl, ed. Stanford, CA: Sanford University Press. 276–306.
*1967 "The Position of Women: Appearance and Reality." ''Anthropological Quarterly''. 40: 97–108.
*1970 "Fieldwork in a Greek Village." ''Women in the Field''. P. Golde, ed. Chicago: Aldine Press. 193–217.
*1975 ''Women and Men: An Anthropologist's View''. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
*1978 "Society and Sex Roles." ''Human Nature.'' 1:8–75. Reprinted in "Culture and Conflict" in 1979. J. Spradley and D. McCurdy, eds.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Friedl, Ernestine
1920 births
2015 deaths
American anthropologists
American expatriates in Greece
Brooklyn College faculty
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Duke University faculty
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Hungarian emigrants to the United States
Hunter College alumni
American women anthropologists
20th-century American women scientists
20th-century American scientists
21st-century American scientists
Jewish anthropologists
American women academics
21st-century American women