The Asian American Diaspora Studies (AADS) program has a new home in the Friedl building on East Campus. Currently, the Friedl building is where the African and African American Studies (AAAS) and Cultural Anthropology department in addition to the Latino/a Studies in the Global South program, which has a certificate, are located. The Friedl building is named for Ernestine Friedl, who passed in 2015 and was the first female dean of Trinity College and a renowned anthropologist.
In the spirit of Dr. Friedl’s legacy, which included hiring additional women and Black faculty under her tenure as dean, the relocation of AADS is an improvement and opportunity to fully address to the need for permanent space for AADS. We hope that the relocation of AADS to join established departments and programs will further push for the institutionalization of AADS with a degree program, which is currently lacking.
The location of AADS on East Campus specifically is also significant. The interdisciplinary departments Gender Sexuality and Feminist Studies (GSF) and International Comparative Studies (ICS) —which encourage a comprehensive analysis of systems of power for racialized, gendered, and sexualized subjects, in line with the goals of AADS — are also located on East Campus in the East Duke building. East Campus is also where the History Department finds its home in the recently designated Classroom Building as of 2018. The Classroom Building was previously called the Carr Building, after Julian Carr, a white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan supporter; following student protests, Duke’s Board of Trustee’s voted to change the building name from Carr to Classroom Building. The history of activism at Duke and on East Campus is in line with the goals of AADS, which was created in 2018 after over twenty years of student activism. We are excited about the new space in Friedl for AADS and will continue to advocate for a degree program at Duke University.
ASIAN AMERICAN & DIASPORA STUDIES PROGRAM