Ferris, Marcie Cohen

PERSONAL:

Education: Brown University, B.A., 1981; College of William and Mary, M.A., 1985; George Washington University, Ph.D., 2003.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, 320 Greenlaw Hall, CB 3520, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520; fax: 919-962-3520. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, historian, museum administrator, documentary producer, lecturer, and educator. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, assistant professor in American Studies, 2004—, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, associate director. The Natchez Jewish Experience (documentary film), producer, 1995. Administrator and educator at museums, including the Norlands Living History Center, Livermore, ME; Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, VA; Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, MA; Museum of Southern Jewish Experience, Utica, MS; University of Mississippi, Center for Public Service and Continuing Education, Oxford, MS; and the Weaving Women's Words Oral History Project, Jewish Women's Archive, Brookline, MA.

MEMBER:

Southern Foodways Alliance (president).

AWARDS, HONORS:

James Beard Foundation Book Award nomination for "Writings on Food" category, and Jane Grigson Award, International Association of Culinary Professionals, both 2006, both for Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South; Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007.

WRITINGS:

(With Bill Aron) Shalom Y'all: Images of Jewish Life in the American South, photographs by Bill Aron, text by Vicki Reikes Fox, foreword by Alfred Uhry, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2002.

Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2005.

(Editor, with Mark I. Greenberg) Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History, Brandeis University Press (Waltham, MA), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, edited by John Egerton, 2002; American Jewish Women: An Historical Reader from Colonial Times to the Present, edited by Pamela Nadell, 2002; and Cornbread Nation 2: The Best of Southern Food Writing, edited by John Egerton, 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Southern Cultures and Southern Jewish History.

SIDELIGHTS:

Marcie Cohen Ferris is an author, historian, and educator based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is assistant professor in American studies and teaches courses on the material culture of the American South. She has more than two decades of experience in museum administration and public history, having worked for museums and centers throughout the South and along the Eastern Seaboard. Her scholarly work in teaching and research revolves around the lives and history of Jewish residents of the American South, and how their religion and customs are influenced by the predominantly Christian areas in which they live. She served as the associate producer of the video documentary The Natchez Jewish Experience, which told the history of the thriving Jewish community in Natchez, Mississippi. Her classes and seminars have examined the overall Southern Jewish experience, the lives of American Jewish women, and the prominent place of food in American culture.

In her written work, Ferris also explores the meaning and application of food culture, but in the context of what it means to Southern Jews. Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South "is a history of the Jewish South, but explored from a slightly unusual perspective—the dinner table," Ferris explained in an interview on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for Jewish Studies Web site. "I'm really interested in how southern Jews, who claim four centuries of history in the South, acculturated to the region, but also retained their Jewish identity. Food is my way of exploring what it means to be both southern and Jewish," Ferris stated. Ferris herself grew up in a Jewish household in Blytheville, Arkansas, and is well-versed in learning about a region through its cookery and food culture.

In Matzoh Ball Gumbo, Ferris offers readers an "entirely satisfying mix of Jewish American history, personal and family experiences (her own and others'), and even a number of recipes to try," observed Erika Dreifus on the Forward Web site. She tells of the struggles Southern Jews experienced at fitting in, even as they worked to adapt their religious dietary restrictions to the world of a region where pork and shellfish were culinary staples. Ferris "sees food as a symbol that encompasses the problem of how Jews live in a region dominated by Christians," noted a Publishers Weekly critic, and as the vehicle whereby they derive their well-defined identity as Southern Jews. Library Journal critic Nicole Mitchell remarked that Ferris's book will be a "hit with anyone interested in cookery, Jewish history, or Southern history." The book is "just plain fun, as well as being serious and thoughtprovoking," and it is "full of interesting ways to eat southern and still keep kosher," remarked Dale Volberg Reed in Southern Cultures. "Meticulously researched and documented, eminently readable, further enlivened with the voices of Ferris's many interviewees, and illustrated with photographs, newspaper clippings, and more, Matzoh Ball Gumbo provides an utterly nourishing read," Dreifus concluded.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Jewish History, December, 2004, Ruth Abusch-Magder, review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South, p. 504; June, 2007, Dale Volberg Reed, review of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History, p. 261.

Austin Chronicle, January 20, 2006, Erin Mosow, review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2007, Barbara G. Shortridge, review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo, p. 234.

Library Journal, September 15, 2005, Nicole Mitchell, review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo, p. 85; November 15, 2006, Elizabeth White, review of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, p. 78.

Mississippi Magazine, January 1, 2006, Ann Grundfest Gerache, review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo, p. 132.

Publishers Weekly, July 11, 2005, review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo, p. 72.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2007, review of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil.

Southern Cultures, fall, 2006, Dale Volberg Reed, review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo, p. 101.

Wisconsin Bookwatch, November, 2005, review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo.

ONLINE

Arkansas State University Web site,http://www.astate.edu/ (November 1, 2005), "Marcie Cohen Ferris to Speak for 2nd Corinne Sternheimer Lecture."

Forward,http://www.forward.com/ (October 14, 2005), Erika Dreifus, "Creole Matzo Balls and Other Southern Treats," review of Matzoh Ball Gumbo.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for Jewish Studies Web site,http://www.unc.edu/ccjs/ (February 19, 2008), biography of Marcie Cohen Ferris.