NEH CHAIR WILLIAM FERRIS TO SPEAK AT HUMANITIES BACCALAUREATE
COLUMBUS -- William Ferris, chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), will visit The Ohio State University campus on June 10 as the featured speaker at the College of Humanities Baccalaureate.
The annual celebration of the achievements of the college’s students, faculty, staff and alumni begins at 3:30 p.m. in the Wexner Center Film/Video Theater, 1871 N. High St. The event, including Ferris’ address, is free and open to the public; no reservation is required.
Ferris is an author, folklorist, filmmaker and academic administrator who has a long and distinguished record of achievement in the humanities. A professor of anthropology and a widely published author, he spearheaded the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and is recognized as a major reference work linking popular, folk and academic cultures.
Other books by Ferris include Ray Lum’s Tales of Horses, Mules, and Men; Local Color; Images of the South: Visits with Eudora Welty and Walker Evans; and Blues from the Delta. His film “Mississippi Blues” was featured at the Cannes Film Festival. He also has made a number of blues sound recordings and for nearly a decade hosted a weekly blues music program for Mississippi Public Radio.
In November 1997, Ferris assumed the chairmanship of the NEH, a federal agency that provides grants to individuals and institutions to support learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities. The NEH funds research, education, museum exhibitions, documentaries, preservation and activities in the states.
Ferris was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. He also has taught at Yale University and at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
His honors include the presidentially awarded Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities, the American Library Association’s Dartmouth Medal, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and France’s Chevalier and Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters.
During the ceremony, two Ohio State alumni will receive the Humanities Alumni Society (HUMAS) Alumni Awards of Distinction. Hugh Harter (B.A. 1947, French; Ph.D. 1958, Romance Languages) and Everett Laybourne (B.A. 1932, English) will be recognized for their personal and professional achievements and for having brought distinction to the college.
A Columbus native now living in New York City, Harter was last a professor of French and Spanish at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he chaired the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures for 14 years. He also taught at several other institutions, including the University of Pittsburgh, the Universidad Católica de Arequipa in Peru and, on two occasions, at Ohio State. For 28 years, he was involved in the direction of a study-abroad program in Segovia, Spain, first through Ohio Wesleyan and then through Horizons for Learning, of which he is president. In addition, he was director of the International Institute in Madrid for three years. He has published various books, including Tangier and All That and Return to Patton’s France. He also has completed poetry and prose translations. Harter earned a master’s degree from Mexico City College (now the University of the Americas) and recently received a Doctor of Letters degree from Alma College in Michigan.
Laybourne earned a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School in 1935 and has been practicing business and corporate law in Los Angeles since 1935. He has been a partner in several law firms. In 1969, he formed the firm Macdonald Halsted & Laybourne, where he was senior partner, and which later merged with Baker & McKenzie, the largest law firm in the world. At the request of the U.S. State Department, Laybourne negotiated a major World War II Lend-Lease obligation of the former Soviet Union. He also served as the California chairman of United Nations Day in 1960. For many years he has been board chair of WAIF Inc., founded by actress Jane Russell, which has engendered more than 40,000 adoptions, many from overseas. In service to Ohio State, he serves on the National Major Gift Committee for the Southern California region for the “Affirm Thy Friendship” fund-raising campaign. Laybourne received the OSU Alumni Centennial Award in 1970 and was recognized with the Alumni Citizenship Award in 1988.
HUMAS also will present Outstanding Student Awards to Lindsay Harris of CELINA, a junior majoring in English with a minor in Spanish and theatre, and Mary Paster of HILLIARD, a senior majoring in linguistics and anthropology. Both students have distinguished themselves academically and are active in the Dean’s Student Advisory Group in the College of Humanities, as well as numerous other campus activities.
Contact: Shari Lorbach, College of Humanities, (614) 292-1882