Bill Ferris Awarded Lifetime Achievement Award

The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) has chosen William Ferris, the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History and the senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award. A native of Vicksburg, William R. Ferris is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he served on the faculty for 18 years.  He also is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.  Named one of the Top Ten Professors in the United States by Rolling Stone magazine, Ferris is the author of the recently published Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues.