Undergraduate Education Overview, Mission, and Learning Outcomes

Courses Offered for the Upcoming Semester – Spring 2010 Courses

Current and Past Semester Courses – Fall 2009 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





Courses Offered for the Current Semester

Fall 2009

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

DOCST 49S.02 Multimedia Documentary
Instructor: Sims
M 2:50–5:20 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.

DOCST 101 Traditions in Documentary Studies
Instructors: Kalow, Thompson
TuTh 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. 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.

DOCST 104S.01 Medicine and Documentary Photography
Instructor: Moses
W 3:05–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
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 the students' work in progress. Consent of instructor required.

DOCST 105S.01 Documentary Experience: A Video Approach
Instructor: Hawkins
Th 1:15–3:45 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 111S Documentary Writing: Creative Nonfiction
Instructor: Hendrickson
Tu 3:05–5:35 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 113)
A writing/reading course built entirely around the use of photographs, and the crafting of compelling nonfiction narratives from them. The essential concept will be to employ photographs as storytelling vehicles. There will be one overriding aim: to achieve memorable, full-bodied stories. Writers as diverse as the poet Mark Strand and the novelist Don DeLillo and the memoirist Wright Morris have long recognized the documentary power of a photograph to launch a story in our imaginations. A lot of the course will go forward trying to use the tools and techniques of both journalism and traditional documentary work: good, old-fashioned reporting, research, legwork, observation, listening, thinking, sifting.

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.

DOCST 113S Digital Documentary Photo: Capturing Transience
Instructor: Post-Rust
TuTh 10:05 a.m.–11:20 a.m. (Smith Arts Warehouse, Multimedia Lab 228)
Using digital photography and a documentary approach, the course investigates subjects in transition, with an emphasis 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, and ink-jet printing, as well as methods of dissemination in the digital age. Digital photographic impermanence as well as social transience will be 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. Please email the instructor at susie@susiepostrust.com. Include your name, year, reason for interest in the class, and experience in photography.

DOCST 115.01 Introduction to Photography
Instructor: Hunter
TuTh 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 emphasize Durham and the Duke community. A final portfolio that embodies a visual idea is required as the final in this class. Consent of instructor required.

DOCST 117 Documentary Photography and the Southern Cultural Landscape
Instructor: Rankin
W 2:50–5:20 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
Emphasis on the tradition and practice of documentary photography as a way of seeing and interpreting cultural life. Includes the techniques of black-and-white photography—exposure, development, and printing—and diverse ways of representing the cultural landscape of the region through photographic imagery. Also covers the roles that objectivity, clarity, politics, memory, autobiography, and local culture play in the making and dissemination of photographs.

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

DOCT 146S Sociology Through Photography
Instructor: Hyde
WF 1:15–2:30 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
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—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. Consent of instructor required.

DOCST 148S.01 Planning the Documentary Film: From Concept to Treatment
Instructor: James
Th 3:05–5:35 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. Students 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, students learn how to get others (as in funders) to understand their stories. 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 a foundation for an efficient and successful shooting schedule.

DOCST 167 Politics of Food
Instructor: Thompson
Th 2:50–5:20 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 007)
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.

DOCST 172S Documenting the Environment
Instructor: Satterwhite
Tu 3:05–5:30 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 201)
Technical and aesthetic training in creating documentaries to communicate critical environmental issues so as to affect societal change. Exploring the history of the essential role of documentary photography in land conservation, social justice, and protection of biodiversity from the early 1800's to today as a class leads to individual documentary projects. Students use the Center for Documentary Studies’ state-of-the-art camera and audio recording equipment as well as learn current methods for Web and gallery exhibition. Seminar, studio, and study of photography in university archives and field trips. Consent of Instructor required.

DOCST 178S Color Photography
Instructor: Harris
M 7:15–9:45 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 CS4, 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 1:15–3:45 p.m. (Smith Arts Warehouse, Multimedia Lab 228)
A documentary fieldwork course in which students create four distinct photographic essays during the semester and study the way other photographers have created photographic essays that communicate to a wide audience. Students learn to create, choose, sequence, and pace their images while studying some of the classic and contemporary masters of photography. Consent of instructor required.

DOCST 190S.03 Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art
Instructor: Fox
Tu 2:50–5:20 p.m. (Allen 304I)
How does a writer take actual events from his/her life and transform them into a memoir that speaks to all readers, regardless of their life experience? We will practice and explore key literary techniques such as scene, summary, and musing; framing; and seamlessly moving from one time period to another. We will engage vigorously with the ethics of nonfiction: How does one write painful things about people who are still living? How much creative license, if any, is acceptable in a memoir? And we will read many exemplary pieces of memoir, both essay- and book-length. Most of all, students will themselves write various pieces of memoir. PLEASE NOTE: Permission from the instructor is required for this course. Students should submit a 5–8 page sample of creative nonfiction or fiction, and include their name, class year, major, email address, and phone number. (Samples can be sections from a longer piece; if you do not have a sample of creative nonfiction or fiction, any piece of prose will be fine.) Submissions should be dropped in Professor Fox's English department mailbox, located in Allen 314, by April 6.

DOCST 190S.04 Civil/Human Rights Activism in Durham: In the Spirit of Pauli Murray
Instructor: Lau
Tu 2:50–5:20 p.m. (CDS, Bridges 001)
This documentary fieldwork course explores the legacy of civil and human rights activism in Durham and the American South through the life and work of noted historian, lawyer, poet, activist, and priest Pauli Murray. Students will utilize scholarship, primary source archival materials, and contemporary documentary projects to set a context for their fieldwork in Durham. By working with the instructor and local social change leaders engaged in work related to the Pauli Murray community history and reconciliation project at the Duke Human Rights Center students will deepen fieldwork skills—photography, writing, audio or filmmaking—and develop documentary projects in collaboration with culturally diverse community groups. Requires field trips to communities in Durham.

See listing of required and elective certificate courses

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.