Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has been elected as a fellow in prestigious national honor society the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Hall is a historian of Southern women’s studies and is the founding director of the Southern Oral History Program in the Center for the Study of the American South.

She has led the program for 37 years, during which it has recorded about 4,300 first-hand accounts of history.

She is among 212 new academy fellows, all of whom will be inducted Oct. 1 at academy headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. Including Hall, UNC has 34 faculty members in the academy. The academy was founded in 1780.

Hall has previously been awarded a National Humanities Medal, given by President Bill Clinton, for her work in deepening the nation’s understanding of the humanities.