Undergraduate Education Overview

Courses Offered for the Upcoming Semester

Current and Past Semester Courses

Instructors

Undergraduate Certificate

Documentary Studies Courses and Cross-Listed Courses

Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies

Student Opportunities at CDS




Past Semester Courses

Fall 2008

DOCST 49S.01 Documentary Writing and the Human Condition
Instructor: Harris
W 10:05 a.m.–12:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
This Freshman seminar explores the convergence of documentary writing and community service. Through service work, the study and discussion of classic and contemporary documentary books, essays, and photographs, and the completion of regular documentary writing assignments, students will learn to create a distinctive and persuasive writing voice about issues of local, national, and international concern.


DOCST 101 Traditions in Documentary Studies
Instructors: Kalow, Thompson
TTh 11:40 a.m.–12:55 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 007)
Traditions of documentary work seen through an interdisciplinary perspective, with an emphasis on twentieth-century practice. Introduces students to a range of documentary idioms and voices, including the work of photographers, filmmakers, oral historians, folklorists, musicologists, radio documentarians, and writers. Stresses aesthetic, scholarly, and ethical considerations involved in representing other people and cultures.


DOCST 104S.01 Medicine and Documentary Photography
Instructor: Moses
W 10:05 a.m.–12:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
Seminar focuses on the intersection of documentary photography and the medical community. Students will complete a semester-long documentary photo project, as well as weekly journals and a five- to ten-page final essay. Part of each class will be devoted to reviewing students' work in progress. Consent of instructor required.


DOCST 105S.01 Documentary Experience: A Video Approach
Instructor: Hawkins
Th 1:15 p.m.–3:45 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 104)
F 10:05 a.m.–12:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 007)
A documentary approach to the study of local communities through video production projects assigned by the course instructor. Working closely with local groups, students will explore issues or topics of concern to the community. Each student will complete a ten-minute edited video as a final project. Consent of instructor required.


DOCST 110S.01 Introduction to Oral History
Instructor: Mantler
M 10:05 a.m.–12:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
Introductory oral history fieldwork seminar that examines oral history theory and methodology, including debates within the discipline. Students will do background historical reading and look at (and listen to) oral history interviews. The object is to develop skills and appreciation for the components and problems of oral history interviewing as well as different kinds of oral history writing. By semester's end, each student will complete a thematic oral history research project whose product is an oral history audiotape suitable for archiving.


DOCST 112S Freedom Stories
Instructor: Tyson
Tu 11:40 a.m.–2:10 p.m. (Bridges 113)
Documentary writing course focusing on race and "storytelling" in the South, using fiction, autobiography, and traditional history books. Students will produce narratives using documentary research, interviews, and personal memories. Focus on twentieth-century racial politics.


DOCST 113S Digital Documentary Photo: Capturing Transience
Instructor: Post-Rust
WF 10:05 a.m.–11:20 a.m. (Smith Arts Warehouse, Multimedia Lab 228)
Digital photography and documentary approach. Investigates subjects in transition, with focus on changing and somewhat transient physical and social landscapes of North Carolina. The class will focus on digital darkroom techniques, understanding visual content, and digital ethics. Students will be given several short field assignments and one cohesive final project. Digital darkroom techniques include digital capture, film scanning, Photoshop, ink-jet printing as well as methods of dissemination offered in digital age. Digital photographic impermanence as well as social transience discussed in unison. Students will also explore ethical issues that arise as a result of the transient nature of images in the digital age. Final projects will result in a Web site with audiovisual slide shows. Samples of last year's projects are viewable at http://www.susiepostrust.com/Duke/fall07.html. Please email the instructor at susie@susiepostrust.com. Include your name, year, reason for interest in the class, and experience in photography.  


DOCST 114S.01 Large Format Photography
Instructor: Satterwhite
Th 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
A course in black-and-white photography that explores the unique creative latitude of large format. Used in classic documentary and by modern masters, contact prints from large format negatives are unparalleled in luminosity and intensity. Students are given 4-by-5 monorail view cameras and taught exposure, camera adjustments to control focus and perspective, sheet film development, and fine silver printing and toning. Emphasis on technical proficiency, visual language, and connections to the documentary tradition, literature, and the sciences. Through assigned readings, conversation with visiting artists, and study of original photographs, the deliberate and collaborative nature of the process is linked to intuition, connectedness, and empowerment. Students create an archival portfolio of fine gelatin silver prints and mount a public exhibit of their work.


DOCST 115.01 Introduction to Photography
Instructor: Hunter
TTh 10:05 a.m.–11:20 a.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
Foundation class in black-and-white photographic process as the basis for using photography as a visual language. Students learn to make a printable exposure using black-and-white film, make a "proper proof," and make an 8-by-10 enlargement. Assignments include portraits, alternative techniques, landscape, and a final portfolio that embodies a single visual idea. Consent of instructor required.


DOCST 135S.01 Introduction to Audio Documentary
Instructor: Biewen
Tu 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 104)
Recording techniques and audio mixing on digital editing software for the production of audio (radio) documentaries. Various approaches to audio documentary work, from the journalistic to the personal; use of fieldwork to explore issues. Stories told through audio, using National Public Radio documentary-style form, focusing on a particular social concern such as class, race, or war and peace.


DOCT 146S Sociology Through Photography
Instructor: Hyde
WF 1:15 p.m.–2:30 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
A seminar focusing on using photography as a tool to see the world through a sociological lens. Students learn how to use photography to explore the social world, how to make photographs with a sociological eye, and how to communicate sociological ideas visually. We examine how photographs shape our realities—our experiences, memories, emotions, and thoughts—and address questions surrounding the truthfulness of photographic representations. In looking at examples of visual sociological studies, we consider theoretical and methodological issues related to the use of photography in social science research. These readings and discussions also prepare students for conducting their own visual research.


DOCST 148S.01 Planning the Documentary Film: From Concept to Treatment
Instructor: James
Tu 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
Historical documentary film preparation through narrative, character-driven stories. Students learn to tell a film story with a beginning, middle, and conclusion that resolves conflict that escalates throughout the film. While the documentary filmmaker cannot invent characters, plot points, or conflict, she or he must find them in the raw material of real life. Choices, which are grounded in sound journalistic principles, must be made concerning style, interpretation, point of view, and format. Learn how to organize the conceptual process for historical documentary films, framing a logical sequence of events; how to determine the focus of a story; how to select characters and storytellers; how to work with historians; and how to structure a documentary for dramatic effect. Just as important, learn how to get others (as in funders) to understand your story. This course will take class members from concept, through research and casting to outline, and, finally, to treatment. It will focus on the pre-production activities and principles that lead to a treatment that is engaging, journalistically sound, historically accurate, and the foundation for an efficient and successful shooting schedule.


DOCST 178S Color Photography
Instructor: Harris
M 7:15 p.m.–9:45 p.m. (Smith Arts Warehouse, Multimedia Lab 228)
A field-based course about color photography as a documentary tool. Students will gain knowledge about the aesthetic and technical foundations of color photography by using recent digital technology. The class will also conduct an intensive examination of the work of historic and contemporary color documentary photographers. Utilizing the new Arts Warehouse multimedia classroom, students will learn advanced techniques in film scanning, Photoshop 8, and color pigment printing. Students will be required to complete a semester-long color photographic project and to produce a series of color pigment prints as a final project. Consent of instructor required.


DOCST 180S The Photographic Essay
Instructor: Harris
M 11:40 a.m.–2:10 p.m. (Smith Arts Warehouse, Multimedia Lab 228)
A course exploring the ways in which particular photographers have created photographic essays that communicate to a wide audience. Research and study of the classic and contemporary masters of photography. Students learn to choose, sequence, and pace images as exhibition-quality inkjet prints, according to the format of their final presentation (book, magazine, exhibition, or Web-based).


DOCST 190S.01 Native American Food
Instructor: Green
Th 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
Explores land, people, and native food, especially the expropriation and rejection of natives themselves, as well as the unique role native food has played in the construction of American identity. Examines the material culture of native food, tradition, and change. Covers Native American food from pre-contact to the "First Thanksgiving" to current environmental and health crises. Bridges the fields of Native American and American studies, food studies, environmental studies, anthropology, history, and folklore. Explores food as a way of shaping and maintaining ethnic, cultural, and national identities. There will be lectures (not many), class discussions, field documentation (interview, video, photographic, etc.), and library research. Local documentation (cooks, farmers, grocery stores, restaurants, farmer's markets, etc.) desirable and, just possibly, we'll do some gathering, cooking, and consumption of native food.  


DOCST 190S.02 Community Organizing and Documentary Work
Instructor: Lau
M 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
Explores the conversation between the practices of community organizing and documentary work. Uses research skills and the documentary arts of photography, writing, interviewing, and filmmaking to explore community dynamics, the practice of community organizing, and the ways in which documentary work has historically been and can be put to work in service to local community efforts. Working with the instructor and leadership of the Southwest Central Durham Quality of Life Project and other Durham organizations, students will deepen their fieldwork skills and develop documentary projects in collaboration with culturally diverse community groups. Readings and guest speakers will emphasize the skills required and challenges of community organizing and the interdisciplinary nature of community-based documentary fieldwork, drawing on anthropology, pedagogy, geography, sociology, and folklore. Special emphasis on collaboration between students and residents.  


DOCST 194S.01 Multimedia Documentary: Editing, Production, and Publication
Instructor: Sims
W 4:25 p.m.–6:55 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 104)
A course designed for students who have undertaken a substantial documentary fieldwork project over the previous summer or other time period, such as DukeEngage students, recipients of the John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Awards granted by CDS, and other students working on independent projects. Over the semester, students will edit and shape their fieldwork material into a Web-based multimedia presentation. Class learns current technologies and techniques for multimedia publications; digital audio and video editing techniques; digital photography and editing in Adobe Photoshop; and graphic design principles. Examination of unique storytelling strategies for on-line presentations and comparison of this medium to traditional venues for documentary work such as exhibitions, books, and broadcast. Critiques of student work by visiting artists and professionals working in documentary media. Fieldwork and productions ethics will also be examined and will be a critical part of the course. No prior experience with computer or Web programming required. Consent of instructor required.  

See listing of required and elective certificate courses

Spring 2008

Fall 2007

Spring 2007

Fall 2006

Spring 2006

Fall 2005

Spring 2005

Fall 2004

Spring 2004







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Untitled, from the series Latino Pastimes—La Vida y el Fútbol. Photograph by William L. Plaxico, from the course "Documentary Photography and the Southern Cultural Landscape," taught by Professor Tom Rankin.