Southern culture and blues scholar William Ferris to showcase a career of fieldwork in the Mississippi Delta through his documentary films
William R. Ferris, distinguished historian and scholar of American Southern cultures, musical folk life, and “the Blues,” will present a rare public viewing of his documentary film work culled from over four decades of ethnographic fieldwork with blues artists (and others) in the Mississippi Delta on Wednesday, April 9, at 7:00 pm in the Hanes Arts Center Auditorium (Room 121) on the UNC-CH campus. A widely published and acknowledged authority on Southern cultures and music, this event allows Ferris to reflect specifically on how his work as a filmmaker and visual documentarian contributed to his life-long interactions with his informants in the field.
Ferris will present several of his short films, ranging from the 1960s to the 1990s, and offer an opportunity for audience interaction throughout the two-hour program. A brief reception will follow, and the event is free and open to the public.
William Ferris is a professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill and an adjunct professor in the Folklore Curriculum. He is Senior 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-nominated 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.
This event is sponsored by Screen Arts Film & Media Series, the UNC Department of Communication Studies, the Center for the Study of the American South, the UNC Graduate and Professional Student Association, and the Student Government at UNC-Chapel Hill. This event was funded at least in part by Student Fees which were appropriated and disbursed by the Student Government at UNC-Chapel Hill.
For further information on this event in particular, please contact Stace Treat, Co-curator of Screen Arts Film & Media Series in the Department of Communication Studies, (919)360-7432, streat@email.unc.edu . To preview a selection of Ferris’s documentaries, visit Folk Streams.net at http://www.folkstreams.net/pub/FilmsByMaker.php#sectionf .
