William Reynolds Ferris Jr. (born February 5, 1942) is an American author and scholar and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Ferris's scholarship has focused on southern African American folklore and culture, through a variety of media: print, sound, film, and photography.
Ferris returned to the South, and, from 1979 to 1997, he was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and a professor of anthropology at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
William J. Bennett, a conservative Republican and former chairman of the NEH under President Reagan, charged that the proposal was an example of how Clinton had "corrupted all of those around him.
[5] In 2002, Ferris was a Visiting Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the Senior Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the American South, professor of history, and adjunct professor in the Curriculum in Folklore.
Then You Die and Forget It All: Ray Lum's Tales of Horses, Mules and Men,[6] and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.
Ferris's photography, documenting aspects of African American southern folklore, has been featured nationally, including in an exhibit by the Smithsonian Museum and an article by the New York Times.
[9] Ferris is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities, bestowed by President Clinton, and France's Chevalier and Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters.