Certificate in Documentary Studies

Students taking courses in documentary audio/radio are prepared for graduate school (MA/MFA) in journalism or a related field, to work in public radio, and to be independents radio/audio/podcast producers and artists. Recommended courses include:

• DOCST 101: Traditions in Doc Studies
• DOCT 110S: Introduction to Oral History
• DOCST 135S: Introduction to Audio Documentary
• DOCST 279S: Docu-Poetry: Real Life Truths Outside and Inside the Poetic Narrative
• DOCST 310S: The Short Audio Documentary
• DOCST 317S: Veterans Oral History Project
• DOCST 364S: The Art of the Interview: Questions and Answers as a Tool of Journalistic Inquiry
• DOCST 480S: Capstone Seminar

Students may apply for support from CDS’s John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Awards for summer documentary fieldwork in any medium. Support is also available from the Deans’ Summer Research Fellowship and the Benenson Awards in the Arts, both sponsored by the university.

Students taking courses in documentary studies are prepared to understand how documentary works and other forms of media can influence and affect policies on all levels. Students can also take production courses to hone their skills in making political- or issue-oriented documentary works. Recommended courses include:

• DOCST 101: Traditions in Doc Studies
• DOCST 202S: Children and the Experience of Illness
• DOCST 209S: Digital Documentary Photography: Education, Childhood, and Growth
• DOCST 227S: Sociology Through Photography
• DOCST 270: Contemporary Documentary Film
• DOCST 271S: Public Policy Video
• DOCST 272S: Documentary and Policy: How Documentary Influences Policy
• DOCST 274: The Middle East Through Film
• DOCST 276S: Writing American Politics
• DOCST 279S: Docu-Poetry: Real Life Truths Outside and Inside the Poetic Narrative
• DOCST 310S: Short Audio Documentary
• DOCST 317S: Veterans Oral History Project
• DOCST 321S: Refugee Lives: Violence, Culture, and Identity
• DOCST 326: The South in Black and White
• DOCST 329S: Historical Documentary Production
• DOCST 332S: Farmworkers in NC: Roots of Poverty, Roots of Change
• DOCST 335S: Who Cares and Why: Social Activism and Its Motivations
• DOCST 341S: Politics of Food: Land, Labor, Health, and Economics
• DOCST 350S: Documentary Black Experiences
• DOCST 362S: Activism, Women, and Danger: Documenting Race, Gender and Activism in the American South
• DOCST 480S: Capstone Seminar

Students may apply for support from CDS’s John Hope Franklin Student Documentary Awards for summer documentary fieldwork in any medium. Support is also available from the Deans’ Summer Research Fellowship and the Benenson Awards in the Arts, both sponsored by the university.

Students taking courses in documentary studies are prepared to understand how documentary works and modes of inquiry can be used as pedagogic tools by K12 and university educators. Recommended courses include:

Students taking courses in documentary studies are prepared for graduate school (MA/PHD) in Southern Studies, Folklore, History, and related programs through learning documentary fieldwork techniques in a variety of media.

• DOCST 101: Traditions in Doc Studies
• DOCST 215: Documentary Photography and the Southern Cultural Landscape
• DOCST 230S: Small Town USA: Local Collaborations
• DOCST 320S: Documenting Black Power: Writing the History of the African American Freedom Struggle
• DOCST 326: The South in Black and White
• DOCST 332S: Farmworkers in North Carolina: Roots of Poverty, Roots of Change
• DOCST 341S: Politics of Food: Land, Labor, Health, and Economics
• DOCST 344S: Our Culinary Cultures
• DOCST 365S: The Documentary Turn: Southern Culture
• DOCST 480S: Capstone Seminar

Students taking courses in documentary studies are prepared to develop innovative solutions to a wide range of business and entrepreneurship challenges and opportunities, drawing on their creative capacities, experience in using diverse communication tools, ability to listen well and other interpersonal skills, and flexibility and openness in their approach to solving problems.

• DOCST 101: Traditions in Doc Studies
• DOCST 115S: Introduction to Black & White Photography
• DOCST 119S: Introduction to Digital Photography
• DOCST 135S: Introduction to Audio Documentary
• DOCST 230S: Small Town USA: Local Collaborations
• DOCST 295S: Arts Entrepreneurship
• DOCST 344S: Our Culinary Cultures
• DOCST 354S: Web Design and Narrative: Artists, Documentarians, Art Historians, and Entrepreneurs
• DOCST 360S: Multimedia Documentary
• DOCST 364S: The Art of the Interview: Questions and Answers as a Tool of Journalistic Inquiry
• DOCST 369S: Advanced Multimedia Production
• DOCST 480S: Capstone Seminar

Students taking courses in documentary studies are prepared to develop innovative solutions to a wide range of challenges and opportunities in the field of medicine, drawing on their creative capacities, experience in using diverse communication tools, ability to listen well and other interpersonal skills, and flexibility and openness in their approach to solving problems.

• DOCST 101: Traditions in Doc Studies
• DOCST 110S: Introduction to Oral History
• DOCST 135S: Introduction to Audio Documentary
• DOCST 202S: Children and the Experience of Illness
• DOCST 206S: Medicine and the Vision of Documentary Photography
• DOCST 209S: Digital Documentary Photography: Education, Childhood, and Growth
• DOCST 227S: Sociology Through Photography
• DOCST 272S: Documentary and Policy: How Documentary Influences Policy
• DOCST 279S: Docu-Poetry: Real Life Truths Outside and Inside the Poetic Narrative
• DOCST 317S: Veterans Oral History Project
• DOCST 320S: Documenting Black Power: Writing the History of the African American Freedom Struggle
• DOCST 332S: Farmworkers in North Carolina: Roots of Poverty, Roots of Change
• DOCST 341S: Politics of Food: Land, Labor, Health, and Economics
• DOCST 362S: Activism, Women, and Danger: Documenting Race, Gender and Activism in the American South
• DOCST 364S: The Art of the Interview: Questions and Answers as a Tool of Journalistic Inquiry
• DOCST 480S: Capstone Seminar

Students taking courses in documentary studies are prepared to develop innovative solutions to a wide range of challenges and opportunities in communication- and journalism-related fields, including reporting, advertising, public relations, and graphic design, by drawing on their creative capacities, experience in using diverse communication tools, ability to listen well and other interpersonal skills, and flexibility and openness in their approach to solving problems.

• DOCST 101: Traditions in Doc Studies
• DOCST 110S: Introduction to Oral History
• DOCST 135S: Introduction to Audio Documentary
• DOCST 209S: Digital Documentary Photography: Education, Childhood, and Growth
• DOCST 215S: Documentary Photography and the Southern Cultural Landscape
• DOCST 227S: Sociology Through Photography
• DOCST 236S: Color Photography: Fieldwork and Digital Color
• DOCST 245S: Photography in Context
• DOCST 250S: The Photobook: Theory & Practice
• DOCST 272S: Documentary and Policy: How Documentary Influences Policy
• DOCST 279S: Docu-Poetry: Real Life Truths Outside and Inside the Poetic Narrative
• DOCST 317S: Veterans Oral History Project
• DOCST 318S: Photo Workshop
• DOCST 341S: Politics of Food: Land, Labor, Health, and Economics
• DOCST 354S: Web Design and Narrative: Artists, Documentarians, Art Historians, and Entrepreneurs
• DOCST 362S: Activism, Women, and Danger: Documenting Race, Gender and Activism in the American South
• DOCST 364S: The Art of the Interview: Questions and Answers as a Tool of Journalistic Inquiry
• DOCST 480S: Capstone Seminar

Noah Lieberman started out as a pre-med student with a major that was eternally “TBD.” Then he decided to move away from pre-med and start coursework in environmental science and documentary studies. He took three DOCST courses his first semester in the certificate program: “Doc Studies 101,” in which he was introduced to some fascinating artists and to the basics of storytelling, “Farmworkers in NC,” which combined his environmental and artistic interests, and “Editing for Film and Video,” which gave him a technical foundation to create video projects. He then studied abroad in Denmark and took a photography course which let him explore his interests in street photography. His last DOCST elective was “Intro to Cinematography,” in which he learned professional cinematographic techniques and how to work on a film production team. For his capstone project, Noah is collecting oral histories from blues and folk musicians and creating an audio piece that will combine interviews, live recordings, and archival audio to tell the story of traditional music in North Carolina. The DOCST certificate program has allowed him to explore multiple modes of artistic expression and become a documentarian who tells stories that deserve to be heard.

Katie Jane Fernelius came to Duke interested in International Comparative Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Neuroscience––it's fair to say that she changed her mind depending on what her current curiosity was. Her sophomore year she took a Documentary Writing class with Duncan Murrell and Kelly Alexander. The class had a mix of undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of disciplines––science PhDs, seniors about to go into finance, aspiring comedians, and sophomores still figuring out what the hell they wanted to do. During the course, the students worked on long-form articles using documentary methodology and shared their work with each other. Through this class, Katie learned about local pun competitions, the fetishization of Asian women, and the quest to learn the origin of life, all through her fellow students' work. It helped Katie realize that documentary work was a way to chase all these disparate curiosities she had. That's when she chose to become a Documentary Studies student; she later went on to take more classes in the documentary essay, the documentary interview, and audio documentary. She pursued a number of independent documentary projects during her time at Duke: photographic and audio documentation of the Constitutional Court in South Africa, documenting the art and testimonies of people living with mental illness in Swaziland, and, later, working on a multimedia thesis project documenting perspectives on citizenship across seven different cities around the world. She now lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria on a Fulbright grant in creative writing where she develops oral history archives, documentary essays, and short radio stories. None of it would be possible without the training and encouragement of the Center of Documentary Studies.

Amanda Brumwell came to Duke with an interest in Global Health, while her passion for photography was meant to take a backseat for her pre-med plans. In the fall of her sophomore year, she took her first class at the Center for Documentary Studies, “Medicine and Documentary Photography,” taught by John Moses, a photographer and pediatrician. In this class, Amanda produced a documentary photography project that explored health and homelessness at Urban Ministries of Durham. The following semester, Amanda enrolled in another class taught by Moses, “Children and the Experience of Illness,” in which students mentor children who are documenting their own experiences with health. While these classes shed light on the applications photography for visual storytelling, Amanda realized she needed more experience in the technical aspects of photography, leading her to enroll in Alex Harris’s “Color Photography” in the fall of her junior year. In this class, she learned best practices in digital color photography, editing, and printing. That semester also convinced her that she needed the certificate in documentary studies to equip her for future work in photography, while a future as a physician was not a good fit after all. Rather, documentary studies complemented her studies in Global Health in their mutual emphasis on holistic problem solving and multifaceted approaches to storytelling. The spring of her junior year, she was inspired to branch out from photography by the “Traditions in Documentary” introductory class and by the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Fellows program. As a result, in her senior year fall she enrolled in “The Documentary Turn” class taught by Wesley Hogan and Bernie Herman, where she was encouraged to use new and developing mediums to explore Southern culture. Her capstone project builds on this project as well as her own experience growing up in the South by using GIFs to share the culture of Southern food.

Christopher White came to Duke interested in Statistical Science. He enrolled in the “Humanitarian Challenges” FOCUS program during his first semester, connecting him to CDS instructor Charlie Thompson. In his FOCUS course on “The U.S. / Mexico Border,” Christopher produced his first documentary project, leading him to explore more documentary forms. Christopher enrolled in four DOCST courses in the fall of his sophomore year. That semester, he was exposed to documentary activism through audio-work, writing as a form of documentary, and documentary film history. During his sophomore spring, Christopher participated in the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Fellows program, inspiring him to pursue creating other documentaries. He then decided not to study Statistics any further, devoting himself fully to documentary and film as a medium; he was able to combine his interest for documentary work with his interest for film production, obtaining a second certificate in Art of the Moving Image. His capstone project is an experimental documentary film showcasing stories from the drive-in theater, specifically in North Carolina.

Lauren Hagedorn came to Duke with a passion for photography, storytelling, psychology, conservation, and sustainability. She considered Program II but then realized she could pursue all of these passions through a Psychology major, Environmental Science minor, and the beloved Documentary Studies certificate. She has thoroughly enjoyed engaging with deeper questions like what it means to be human, what constitutes documentary, and how to use documentary work as a powerful change agent in social justice issues. Through CDS classes like Lisa Satterwhite's “Documenting the Environment” (photography), Lauren gained exposure to documentary as a platform for environmental education and stewardship. Her junior year, Lauren participated in Susie Post-Rust’s “Digital Photography” course, which inspired a new passion: education. Lauren loved photographing in a kindergarten class at Club Boulevard Elementary in Durham. Like all her DOCST courses, “Digital Photography” gave Lauren the opportunity to engage with the community beyond Duke more meaningfully, which she loves. Over the course of her time at Duke, Lauren has become increasingly interested in the importance of place, and how natural and constructed environments impact our sense of community and subsequent behavior. Lauren’s capstone project is an exploration of place-based memories to create a different “Portrait of Duke.” Lauren’s project features seniors’ reflections on the specific locations across campus where they experienced both their highest and lowest moments at Duke.