William R. Ferris

William R. Ferris serves as Professor of History and Folklore and Senior Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is a preeminent scholar of Southern U.S. cultural traditions with extensive fieldwork in the Mississippi Delta region.

His research centers on African American musical heritage, particularly blues traditions, alongside Southern religious practices and folklore. Ferris employs ethnographic methodologies including documentary filmmaking and oral history collection to document vanishing cultural expressions, with recurring focus on racial identity, historical memory, and community resilience in the American South.

His scholarly output reveals consistent thematic trajectories across books and films: documentation of African American expressive culture, preservation of Delta region traditions, and interdisciplinary exploration of Southern identity. Works like the Pulitzer-nominated Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and the Cannes-screened Mississippi Blues demonstrate his commitment to archiving cultural heritage through multiple media formats.

Ferris's contributions extend beyond academia through public scholarship initiatives including a decade-long blues radio program on Mississippi Public Radio and numerous sound recordings that disseminate Southern musical traditions to broader audiences.