Marcie Cohen Ferris is an emeritus professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Director of UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South where she is a faculty editor for , a quarterly journal of the history and cultures of the U.S. South. Ferris is the author of The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region, (UNC Press, 2014), Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South (UNC Press, 2005; nominated for a James Beard Award, 2006), and co-editor of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History (Brandeis, 2006). In 2018, Ferris received the Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Her recent book with UNC Press (Spring 2022), , explores the vibrant contemporary food movement in the Tar Heel State. Ferris continues to teach and research on the Jewish South and southern food cultures and is currently working on a non-fiction narrative of her Russian and Arkansas family.
