Undergraduate education

Undergraduate courses in Documentary Studies are open to Duke University students. Students enrolled at other universities in the North Carolina Triangle area—the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University, and North Carolina State University—may also take these courses for credit. Students may complete a Certificate in Documentary Studies. As part of its undergraduate education program, CDS coordinates the Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professorship^[14] in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which brings a documentarian to teach on both campuses each year. Past Lehman Brady Professors have included Deborah Willis,^[15] Allan Gurganus,^[16] and Marco Williams,^[17] among others. CDS offers several undergraduate awards and fellowships.

Continuing education

CDS offers continuing education courses in the documentary arts through onsite and online classes, summer intensives, and weekend workshops. The open-admissions program includes the option of completing a Certificate in Documentary Arts;^[18] a two-year distance-learning certificate track is available for non-local students.

Graduate education

CDS cofounded—with the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies and the Arts of the Moving Image Program—Duke University’s first Master of Fine Arts program, the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts (MFA|EDA).^[19] The two-year course of study brings together the documentary approach with experimental production in analog, digital, and computational media. Former CDS director Tom Rankin is the current director of the MFA|EDA.^[20]

Current

One of CDS’s oldest initiatives, Literacy Through Photography (LTP), was developed by Wendy Ewald in partnership with CDS and the Durham Public Schools. Ewald also developed an LTP program in Houston.^[40] The LTP teaching methodology challenges students to explore their world using photography and to use the images as a stimulus for verbal and written expression. An LTP undergraduate course at CDS includes working with children in local schools.^[41] Through the DukeEngage program, undergraduates can participate in an LTP program created by CDS staff in Arusha, Tanzania, that trains Tanzanian teachers in LTP’s philosophy and methodology and works with Tanzanian students on classroom photography and writing projects.^[42] LTP staff also conduct workshops at home and abroad.

Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows Program is named after the social-reform photographer Lewis W. Hine and places young documentarians in fellowships with humanitarian organizations focused on the needs of children and their communities.^[43]

CDS’s Documentary Diversity Project is a three-year pilot program aimed at bringing more people of color into the documentary arts field.^[44][45] Emerging artists (18–24) and post-MFA fellows from underrepresented groups have long term, living-wage residencies to work on developing their skills and projects. The pilot, which started in 2017, is made possible in part by the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust.^[46]

The SNCC Digital Gateway is a documentary website that was created as part of a partnership between CDS, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Legacy Project, and Duke University Libraries.^[47] The site explores SNCC as an organization and how it worked to organize a grassroots movement in the 1960s around voting rights that has relevance today.^[48] A stated aim of the site is to make SNCC’s experiences and strategies accessible to activists, educators, students, and engaged citizens. The gateway was made possible by the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, including a series of critical oral histories with civil rights veterans, historians, and others on the Black Power movement. A second series of oral histories, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities,^[49] will focus on the work that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Through a 2017–18 publishing partnership with the Oxford American magazine, CDS contributes stories to the magazine’s online series, The By and By.^[50] CDS’s contributions feature work by its faculty, students, and affiliated artists.

Past

Several of CDS’s previous projects and initiatives include the Behind the Veil oral history project that documented African American life in the Jim Crow South;^[51][52] the Jazz Loft Project based on photographs and tapes made by W. Eugene Smith,^[53][54] which resulted in a book,^[55] a radio series with WNYC,^[56] and a national touring exhibition;^[57] and Indivisible: Stories of American Community, a national photography and audio initiative that included the work of photographers Dawoud Bey, Bill Burke, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Lucy Capehart, Lynn Davis, Terry Evans, Lauren Greenfield, Joan Liftin, Reagan Louie, Danny Lyon, Sylvia Plachy, and Eli Reed and resulted in a book and national touring exhibition.

The Behind the Veil project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lyndhurst Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Devonwood Foundation, and the graduate schools at Duke University and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Both the Jazz Loft Project and Indivisible were in partnership with the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography.^[58][59][60] The Jazz Loft Project was funded by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Indivisible was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

CDS published DoubleTake magazine from 1995–1999 with major support from the Lyndhurst Foundation. Robert Coles and Alex Harris were the founding editors of the quarterly publication, which featured photography and writing.^[61] The magazine won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1998.^[62] In 1999, the magazine became an independent nonprofit and moved to Somerville, Massachusetts. DoubleTake announced its closing in 2004.^[63][64]