Marcie Cohen Ferris

Marcie Cohen Ferris is an associate professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she directs the Southern Studies concentration. Ferris’s research and teaching interests include the history of the Jewish South and the foodways and material culture of the American South. From 2006-2008, Ferris served as president of the board of directors of the Southern Foodways Alliance. She has served as editor for three special issues on food for UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South’s journal, Southern Cultures (Winter 2009, Summer 2012, Spring 2015). Ferris’s Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South (UNC Press, 2005) was nominated for a 2006 James Beard Foundation Award. She is co-editor of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil:  A New History (University Press of New England, 2006). Ferris’s current book, The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region (UNC Press, 2014), examines the visceral connection between southern food and the politics of power.

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. Bill Ferris, my step-daughter Virginia, and the extended Ferris clan
2. Roper Ferris, white Labrador of eastern North Carolina
3. Wine, pretzels, and a mozzarella cheese stick at 5:30 PM
4. Oprah, but I got over it
5. My “little family,” when everybody is playing nice
6. Daily Grind Coffee to survive my office in Greenlaw
7. Multi-grain bread from Weaver Street
8. Peanut butter
9. Southern Foodways Alliance
10. Walking, preferably on Wrightsville Beach