Undergraduate Education Overview, Mission, and Learning Outcomes

Courses Offered for the Upcoming Semester – Fall 2012 Courses

Current and Past Semester Courses – Spring 2012 Courses

Instructors

Undergraduate Certificate

Graduation with Distinction

Documentary Studies Courses and Cross-Listed Courses

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

Student Opportunities at CDS





Courses Offered for the Upcoming Semester – Spring 2012


DOCST 49S.01 Multimedia Documentary
Instructor: Sims
M 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 104)
A fieldwork and production course focused on the publication of interactive web-based multimedia presentations, as pioneered by washingtonpost.com, nytimes.com, Magnum in Motion, and independent producers. Utilizing digital audio and photography, the class will work as a team to create a series of narrated slide shows around a common theme in a documentary style. Students learn current technologies and techniques for multimedia publications; basic field recording and digital audio editing techniques; digital photography and editing in Adobe Photoshop; and graphic design principles. 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. 
Cross list: ARTSVIS 49S


DOCST 100S.01 Children and Illness
Instructor: Moses
Th 6:00 p.m.– 8:30 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
An exploration of how children cope with illness, incorporating the tools of documentary photography and writing. Students will work outside class with children who are ill and teach them how to use a camera, working toward an exhibit of photographs at the end of the semester. Permission required. No prerequisites.
Cross list: PUBPOL 100S; VISUALST 103IS


DOCST 101 Traditions in Documentary Studies
Instructor: Kalow
TuTh 10:05 a.m.–11:20 a.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
Traditions of documentary work seen through an interdisciplinary perspective, with an emphasis on twentieth-century practice. The course introduces students to a range of documentary idioms and voices, including the work of photographers, filmmakers, oral historians, folklorists, musicologists, radio documentarians, and writers, and stresses aesthetic, scholarly, and ethical considerations involved in representing other people and cultures.
Cross list: VISUALST 103A


DOCST 105S.01 Documentary Experience: A Video Approach
Instructor: Hawkins
W 10:05 a.m.–12:35 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.
Cross list: CULANTH 134S; FVD 139S; HISTORY 150BS; POLISCI 156S; VISUALST 103CS; PUBPOL 105S


DOCST 112S Freedom Stories
Instructor: Tyson
W 11:40 a.m.– 2:10 p.m. (CDS, 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.
Cross list: AAAS 112S; HISTORY 150ES


DOCST 115.01 Introduction to Photography
Instructor: Hunter
Th 10:05 a.m.–12:35 p.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, a “proper proof,” and 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.
Cross list: ARTSVIS 115.01


DOCST 123S.01 Photography in Context
Instructor: Sartor
M 3:05 p.m.– 5:35 p.m. (Perkins 118)
Using the Documentary Arts Archive at Duke Libraries as a resource to challenge students to think critically about photography, the course considers how photography offers insights into areas of academic study such as social change, sexual identity, and regional culture, and how images have shaped collective understanding of these issues. Focuses on analyzing and contextualizing bodies of photographic work, the historical moment in which the pictures were made, personal history and artistic sensibility of the photographer, tools of the medium, along with considering personal responses to images and the ways in which all factors come together.
Cross list: ARTSVIS 142S; VISUALST 131BS


DOCST 127S.01 Video for Social Change
Instructor: Orenstein
W 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
Documentary film course focusing on the production of advocacy videos for social change. Covers methods and traditions of community organizing, introduces knowledge and skill sets needed to make effective videos for grassroots organizations, and explores how video is integrated into organizing strategies to achieve better results. Includes instructor-supervised fieldwork with community partner organization. Student groups will research, write, direct, and produce their own videos for a campaign to improve educational and economic opportunities in Durham's low-income communities.
Cross list: AMI 153; PUBPOL 196WS


DOCST 128S.01 Documentary and Policy
Instructor: Price
Th 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
Examines documentaries as catalysts for change in local, state, and federal laws and regulations, with special attention to relationships between film and organizations with political influence. Looks at how documentaries have altered public sentiment and political outcomes. Uses case studies of documentary films (essay-style, journalistic, information-driven films; narrative, story-driven films; propaganda; art films; and hybrids of all of the above). Explores the question of how a film achieves influence: for example, with a high-profile theatrical and/or television release, by utilization as an educational tool, or by “going viral” to become part of a public conversation.
Cross list: AMI 153S; PUBPOL 196ZS


DOCST 129.01 Contemporary Documentary Films
Instructor: Rankin, Abe
Tu 1:30 p.m.–5:00 p.m. (Nasher 105)
Integrated with the films and filmmakers of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Course looks at the art form and technology of documentary films, and continuity and change in the style, issues, and politics of contemporary documentary filmmaking. Involves analysis of outstanding films from around the world. Presentations and discussions by filmmakers.
Cross list: AMI 103; POLSCI 156A; PUBPOL 171; VMS 117B


DOCST 132.01 The South in Black and White
Instructor: Tyson
Tu 6:15 p.m.–8:45 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 007)
Documentary traditions in the American South, with focus on the call and response between black and white cultures in a region where democracy has been envisioned and embattled with global consequences. History and culture as documented in spirituals, gospel, blues, and rock-and-roll; civil rights photography; Southern literature; and historical and autobiographical writing. Will include work by such historians as W.E.B. Du Bois, C. Vann Woodward, John Hope Franklin; literary achievements of Richard Wright, Zora Neal Hurston, and Ernest Gaines, along with their white counterparts William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Lillian Smith, and others. Includes lectures, music, poetry, film clips, discussion, and visitors.
Cross list: AAAS 131


DOCST 144S.01 Literacy Through Photography
Instructor: Hyde
Tu 10:05 – 12:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
Children’s self-expression and education through writing, photography, and documentary work. Focus on the reading and critical interpretation of images. The history, philosophy, and methodology of Literacy Through Photography. Includes internship in elementary- or middle-school classrooms. 
Cross list: EDUC 144S; VMS 103FS


DOCST 150S.01 Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking
Instructor: Hawkins
WF 4:25 p.m.–6:20 p.m.
Intermediate to advanced filmmaking techniques. Presumes a working knowledge of Final Cut Pro and mini-DV camera, as well as some fieldwork experience with a camcorder. Topics include fieldwork in a variety of communities and work on pertinent social and cultural issues. Prerequisite: Documentary Studies 105S or equivalent experience and knowledge. Consent of instructor required.
Cross list: FVD 116S; PUBPOL 182S

DOCST 155S.01 Short Audio Documentary
Instructor: Biewen
Tu 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 104)
Intermediate to advanced audio documentary techniques. Includes instructor-supervised fieldwork with an audio recorder in a variety of cultural settings on a particular issue, as well as independent work on students’ own audio productions resulting in broadcast-quality pieces suitable for radio or podcasting. Consent of instructor required.
Cross list: PJMS 155S


DOCST 158S.01 Small Town USA
Instructor: Post-Rust
Tu 10:05 a.m.–12:45 p.m. (Smith Arts Warehouse 228)
Theory and practice of documentary photography in a small-town context. Students work in collaboration with each other to complete a documentary photographic study of Hillsborough, North Carolina. Each student documents one person, community, or issue. Course of study includes an analysis of the documentary tradition, particularly as it relates to locally situated work and to select individual projects. The course addresses issues inherent in the documentary process, including building visual narratives, developing honest relationships with subjects, responsibility to subjects and their communities, and engaging with and portraying a community as an outsider. Students learn photo elicitation and editing techniques and use them to inform their projects during the semester. As part of their coursework, students will produce exhibition-quality work for presentation in Hillsborough. Students must have access to transportation (including shared rides) during the semester. Consent of instructor required. E-mail: susie@susiepostrust.com.
Cross list: PUBPOL 158S; ARTSVIS 158S; VISUALST 103WS


DOCST 167S.01 Politics of Food
Instructor: Thompson
MW 10:05 a.m.–11:20 a.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
Explores the food system through fieldwork, study, and guest lectures that include farmers, nutritionists, sustainable agriculture advocates, rural organizers, and farmworker activists. The course examines how food is produced, seeks to identify and understand its workers and working conditions in fields and factories, and using documentary research conducted in the field and other means, unpacks major current issues in the food justice arena globally and locally. Fieldwork required but no advanced technological experience necessary. At least one group field trip, perhaps to a local farm or farmers market, is required.
Cross list: CULANTH 168AS; PUBPOL 112S


DOCST 181S.01 Our Culinary Cultures
Instructor: Alexander
F 10:05 a.m.–12:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
This course applies a documentary approach to the world of food and its inhabitants, from the men who sling eggs at Las Vegas diners to the farmers who raise North Carolina hogs. Students will employ extensive fieldwork to show the ways in which understanding what a person eats establishes his or her cultural identity. Through deep personal stories, we will examine issues in food, including how it is raised, prepared, and presented. Food-oriented research projects will reveal the key biographical, economic, religious, and other truths that connect what we eat to who we are. We will cook for each other in the kitchen lab as well.
Cross list: CULANTH 184S


DOCST 190.01 Masculinity and U.S. Christianity
Instructor: Hall
Th 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 007)
Explore how current initiatives marketed toward white, Protestant men are shaped by and differ from earlier projects to demonstrate the potency of Christian faith. Analyze mainstream conceptions of Christianity in the U.S., drawing on cultural history and gender, race, and power analyses. Develop tools for cultural criticism and apply these to questions of gender and Christianity. Examine the interplay of anxiety, hope, and desire in such projects as Fight Club Church, Men’s Prayer Breakfasts and other male-targeted efforts in a sympathetic, not condescending manner. Final project focused on documenting the perspectives of men involved in a form of ministry aimed at men.


DOCST 190S.03 Documentary and South Africa
Instructor: Lucey
MW 2:50 p.m.–4:05 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
Uses documentary films to examine how history is written, contested, and retold in South Africa. Investigates how media sources represented struggle for democracy in South Africa and why discrepancies existed between state and independent sources. Explores challenges faced by independent media and documentary filmmakers since the end of apartheid, and examines how digital technology has created new opportunities to tell stories in the country.
Cross list: PJMS 195S; PUBPOL 195S


DOCST 190S.04 Ethnographic Writing: The Veterans Oral History Project in North Carolina
Instructor: Lanier
Tu 6:00 p.m.–8:30 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
This course will introduce students to the art of conducting oral history interviews, specifically interviewing U.S. military veterans (both women and men) who have served during times of conflict, including WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other recent conflicts. Students will be expected to conduct several (to be determined) interviews with veterans throughout the course, either using audio or video equipment. Students will read a wide variety of articles about the ethics of oral history work in general and the specifics of interviewing veterans in particular. Classes will consist of discussion of articles, learning the steps toward conducting a good oral history interview, and learning the equipment appropriate for oral history work. Class time will also include discussion of interviews that students conduct throughout the semester, as well as working with transcripts from the interviews. Student responsibilities will include writing responses to the various readings on a designated Blackboard learning site and giving a presentation at the end of the course on the interviews they have done (no tests or formal papers).
Cross list: CULANTH 180S; ENG 173S


DOCST 190S.05 Duke Immerse: United States and South Africa Documentary and Literature
Instructor: Forner
M 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 001)
A comparison of the civil rights movement and anti-apartheid struggle. Examines similarities and differences between movements for social change in the United States and South Africa through documentaries, literature, music, and primary sources. Uses a comparative framework to investigate cross-national themes and trends. Explore how documentaries and literature depict and shape the history of the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle. Enrollment restricted to Duke Immerse students.
Cross list: AAAS 199S; HIST 106S; PUBPOL 195S


DOCST 190.05 Food Studies: Interdisciplinary Approach
Instructors: Thompson, Rudy
Tu 4:25 p.m.–7:30 p.m. (location tbd)
Study of emergent issues in local food movement from many different disciplinary viewpoints. Explores issues such as: Where does industrial food come from? Why is it so inadequate? Who sells it to us, and what is their stake in the growth and manufacturing? What kinds of farming practices have changed over the last half-century and why? What cultural processes have shaped the planting, harvesting, cooking, packaging, shipping, advertising, selling, and buying of our food? What do these shifts mean for consumers, for farmers, for farm workers, for farm animals, and for the greater environment? What is the role of chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones), genetic modifications, and cloning in this new world of food? Can we really produce enough food without them? Studying emerging discourses of “locavorism,” we will also examine some of the problems associated with local eating, and we will strive toward solutions that address these problems. Using ideological critique and its sustained attention to “race, class, gender, sexuality, and the more-than-human world (environment and animals),” we’ll investigate the wider implications of eating locally for different classes and races of people, and for the animals we eat. We will pay keen attention to the resurgence of “the small family farm” and consistently ask questions about the role of women and differently gendered people on those farms. We will ask: who harvests and cooks local food for us and with what ends in mind? What is the impact of local food on low-income families? Is the small family farm of the 1940s or ‘50s really a model we want to “return” to? Are there better ways to a future of food?
Cross list: CULANTH 180, WOMENST 150


DOCST 190S.06 Introduction to Non-Profit Cultural Institutions
Instructor: Ellison
WF 11:40 a.m.–12:55 p.m. (Bryan Ctr. 128)
Non-profit cultural institutions are an integral part of the arts community in the United States---at all levels: national, regional and local. Through readings, discussion, projects and service-learning, the course will provide an overview of how non-profit cultural organizations are formed and operate, looking at the operational structures and governance challenges. The course will also look at the origins of some of the major cultural institutions in the United States and of the current tax-exempt status framework. Class members will choose specific local non-profit organizations to partner with and, through special arrangement, be allowed to attend board meetings and participate on  committees of or projects for those organizations. 
Cross list: THEATERST 169S.01, DANCE 181S.01, PUBPOL 195S.09


DOCST 196S.01 Capstone Seminar
Instructor: Thompson
M 3:05 p.m.–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
Immersion in fieldwork-based inquiry and in-depth projects that serve as Certificate in Documentary Studies capstone experiences for students. Methods of documentary fieldwork, including participant observation, and modes of arts and humanities interpretation through a variety of mediums (including papers, film, photography exhibits, radio pieces, and performances). Consent of instructor required. Prerequisite: DOCST 101 and four DOCST electives.


DOCST 211.01 Documentary Writing Workshop
Instructor: Murrell, Alexander
W 10:05 a.m.–12:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 001)
Workshop in the art and practice of writing in the long-form traditions of narrative nonfiction, literary journalism, and documentary writing. Write, share, and refine one major work of narrative nonfiction throughout the semester. Discuss research methods and resources, especially those useful for creative writers. Intended for advanced writers who would like to work on ambitious nonfiction writing in an intensely creative and supportive workshop.


DOCST 215.01 Environmental Issues & the Documentary Arts
Instructor: Espelie
Th 6:00 p.m.–8:30 p.m. (location tbd)
Survey how filmmakers, authors, photographers, and other artists have brought environmental issues to the public's attention in the last century, and in some cases instigated profound societal and political change. Examine the nebulous distinctions between persuasion and propaganda, agenda and allegory, point of view and content. Evolve as a viewer of the environment and a maker of documentary art. Initiate your own projects to address and/or depict environmental issues in one form of a broad range of media.
Cross list: AMI 215; ENVIRON 298

See listing of required and elective certificate courses

Fall 2011

Spring 2011

Fall 2010

Spring 2010

Fall 2009

Spring 2009

Fall 2008

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.