May 2, 2026COTTON STORIES, ORAL HISTORY, AND THE LIVING SOUTH
As Interim Director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Marcie Cohen Ferris guides a hub for interdisciplinary research, publication, and teaching about our region. CSAS explores the Southern experience by publishing and preserving the voices that shape its evolving story.
Born and raised in northeastern Arkansas, Ferris has studied, documented, interpreted, exhibited, taught, and written about the South for more than forty years. Her research focuses on foodways, material culture, and the Southern Jewish experience. She is the author of The Edible South and Matzoh Ball Gumbo and, most recently, edited the essay collection Edible North Carolina.
To the world, Ferris is a scholar, leader, author, and teacher. To Project Threadways, she has been a mentor and a friend. We have been honored to collaborate with the CSAS on the “Future of Textiles” issue for Southern Cultures, the Center’s quarterly journal, and with the Southern Oral History Program, which amplifies the voices that shaped Southern history and society and trains the next generation of oral histories. Last fall, a class of UNC-CH undergraduate students conducted oral history interviews with current and former textile workers in North Carolina, in partnership with Project Threadways.
For our April 2026 symposium, we welcomed Ferris to the Shoals, where she presented cotton stories during the New Deal era and their legacies. Additionally, two students from the collaborative oral history class shared about their narrators’ stories, as we consider the power of history written by everyday people.
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