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Marcie Cohen Ferris

Marcie Cohen Ferris is an assistant professor in American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Associate Director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies. Ferris received her B.A. from Brown University (1981), her M.A. from the College of William and Mary (1985), and her Ph.D. from George Washington University (2003).

Ferris has worked in the field of museums and public history for over twenty years, where she has focused on public programs, interpretation, and administration. Her experience includes the Norlands Living History Center in Livermore, Maine; Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Virginia; Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts; the international program division at Elderhostel in Boston, Massachusetts; the Center for Public Service and Continuing Education at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi; the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in Utica, Mississippi; and the Weaving Women's Words Oral History Project of the Jewish Women's Archive in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Ferris, a noted scholar of the Jewish experience in the American South, joined the faculty in American Studies in 2004, where she regularly teaches “Shalom Y'all: The Jewish Experience in the American South.” In the spring of 2005, she created two new seminars, one exploring the history of American Jewish women, and the other examining the meaning of food in American culture.

Ferris has published articles in numerous journals and anthologies, including Southern Cultures, Southern Jewish History, Cornbread Nation 1 and 2: The Best of Southern Food Writing, ed. John Egerton (2002 and 2004), American Jewish Women: An Historical Reader from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Pamela Nadell (2002), and Shalom Y'all: Images of Southern Jewish Life in America, photographs by Bill Aron, edited by Vicki Reikes Fox with Bill Aron and Marcie Cohen Ferris (2002). She was associate producer for The Natchez Jewish Experience (1995), a video documentary on the history of the Jewish community in Natchez, Mississippi. Ferris is co-editor with Mark Greenberg of A New History of the Southern Jewish Experience, an anthology to be published by University of New England Press on behalf of Brandeis University, and her Matzah Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2005.

Jewish Studies Courses Taught:
JWST 53/AMST 53/WMST 53. “Mamas and Matriarchs: A Social History of Jewish Women in America”
JWST 80/AMST 80. “Shalom Y’all: The Jewish Experience in the American South.”