William R. Ferris

William R. Ferris is a former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and cofounder of the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis. He is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and is coeditor of The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. He was senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he is professor emeritus. In 2019, he received a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album for Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris.