Ernestine Friedl facts for kids

Ernestine Friedl (born August 13, 1920 – died October 12, 2015) was an American anthropologist. Anthropologists are scientists who study human societies and cultures. She was also an author and a university professor.

Friedl led important groups like the American Ethnological Society and the American Anthropological Association. She was the first woman to be a Dean of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. A building at Duke was named in her honor in 2008. She was very interested in gender roles (how men and women live and act in different societies), village life in modern Greece, and the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin.

Early Life

Ernestine Friedl was born in Hungary in 1920. When she was two years old, she moved to the United States with her parents. They settled in the West Bronx neighborhood of New York City. Her father had worked for the railway in Hungary. In the U.S., he became a salesman, and her mother worked in clothing factories.

Education and Learning

Friedl attended Hunter College, a public college for women in New York. She graduated in 1941 with a degree in pre-social work. This prepared her for a career helping people in society.

She then went to Columbia University for graduate school. She studied there from 1941 to 1950. In 1950, she earned her Ph.D. (a very high university degree) in anthropology.

Who Inspired Her?

While at Hunter College, Friedl met three important people. Two of them were her anthropology professors, Dorothy L. Keur and Elsie Steedman. They taught and inspired her to become an anthropologist. She also met her future husband, Harry Levy, who studied ancient languages. Harry encouraged her to continue her studies and become an anthropologist. Other important teachers for her were Columbia professors Ralph Linton and Ruth Benedict.

Studying People and Cultures

In 1942 and 1943, Friedl studied the St. Croix Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin. She worked under the guidance of her professor, Ralph Linton. She wrote about the Chippewa's political organization and leadership.

After getting her Ph.D., she and her husband traveled to Greece in 1954. They did anthropological fieldwork there. Fieldwork means living with and observing people to learn about their culture. She received a special grant to study life in Vasilika, a small farming village in Greece. She returned to Greece from 1964 to 1965 to study people who had moved from villages to cities.

In 1971 and 1972, Friedl and Levy spent time in Athens, Greece. During this time, Friedl worked on her book Women and Men. This is when she became very interested in studying gender roles.

Her Career as a Professor

Friedl started teaching at Brooklyn College in 1942. She taught there until 1973, except for short times at Wellesley College and Queens College. In 1973, she became an anthropology professor at Duke University.

In 1976, she was chosen as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At Duke, she led the Department of Anthropology from 1973 to 1978. She also served as the Dean of Arts and Sciences and Trinity College from 1980 to 1985. This made her the first woman to hold that important position.

She also held leadership roles in professional groups. She was the secretary and then president of the American Ethnological Society in 1967. In 1970, she joined a committee for women in anthropology. Later, she served as president of the American Anthropological Association from 1974 to 1975.