William Ferris

Contact Information

CB #9127, Hamilton Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9127
Phone: (919) 962-5538

William Ferris ar the Center for the Study of the American South:
Senior Associate Director
Phone: (919) 962-0519

Education

M.A. (English), Northwestern University, 1965
M.A. (Folklore), University of Pennsylvania, 1967
Ph.D. (Folklore), University of Pennsylvania, 1969

Research Interests

William R. Ferris is a professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill and an adjunct professor in the Folklore Curriculum. He is associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, and is widely recognized as a leader in Southern studies, African-American music and folklore.

He is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Prior to his role at NEH, Ferris served as the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he was a faculty member for 18 years.

Ferris has written and edited 10 books and created 15 documentary films, most of which deal with African-American music and other folklore representing the Mississippi Delta. He co-edited the Pulitzer Prize nominee Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, which contains entries on every aspect of Southern culture and is widely recognized as a major reference work linking popular, folk, and academic cultures. Click here for information on his latest book Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues.

Courses

HIST 560: Southern Literature and the Oral Tradition

HIST 570: Southern Music