People
Wesley Hogan
Director, Center for Documentary Studies
Wesley Hogan is the director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and teaches the history of youth social movements, African American history, women’s history and oral history.
Amani Ahmed
Board of Directors
Amani Ahmed is a rising senior at Duke University, majoring in visual media studies and information science.
Kelly Alexander
Lecturing Fellow
Kelly Alexander is a writer and an anthropologist based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Whitney Baker
Web Design and Production Manager
Whitney is a writer, programmer and all-around multimedia storyteller with a passion for local, community-driven stories. She received a bachelor's in multimedia journalism and Spanish from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, where she was also able to experience the glorious life of a theater technician, travel through South America and learn to make balloon animals.
Bill Bamberger
Lecturing Fellow
Bill Bamberger’s work explores large cultural and social issues of our time: the demise of the American factory, housing in America, adolescents coming of age in an inner-city high school. His book with Cathy N.
Brittany Barbee
Emerging Documentary Artist, Documentary Diversity Project
Brittany was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina. She is a lover of all forms of art. The motto she stands by is, “Anything arts is who I am, and anything arts is who I’ll always be.” She is a self- taught musician. At the age of nine, music sparked her interest, specifically percussion.
Samantha Bechtold
Documentary Arts and Publishing Intern
Samantha Bechtold is the documentary arts and publishing intern at the Center for Documentary Studies. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BA in journalism, where she served as editor-in-chief of her university's yearbook, Sooner.
Michelle Benham
Director of Marketing, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Michelle Benham is the marketing director at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.
Abbas Benmamoun
Board of Directors
Abbas Benmamoun is professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies and linguistics, and vice provost for faculty advancement at Duke University, a position responsible for providing intellectual leadership, guidance, and oversight of university-wide strategies and programs to enhance faculty excellence. He oversees faculty development programs, including programs to recruit outstanding and diverse faculty and to partner with schools, departments, and centers to enhance faculty success at Duke and promote a climate that values and celebrates inclusive excellence.
Michael Betts II
Graduate Assistant, DocX
Michael Betts is a student in the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program at Duke University (’20) and a graduate assistant working on the DocX lab’s experimental site, CDS Shortwave.
John Biewen
Audio Program Director/Instructor
John Biewen is audio program director at CDS and host of the Center’s audio documentary podcast, Scene on Radio. During a thirty-year career as a public radio journalist and documentary-maker, he has told stories from forty American states and from Europe, Japan, and India.
Greg Britz
Associate Director for Operations and Finance
Greg Britz is the Associate Director for Operations and Finance at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (CDS) where he has worked for the past 22 years. An interdisciplinary educational organization affiliated with Duke University, the Centre for Documentary Studies offers a variety of programs that connect the arts and humanities to fieldwork, drawing upon documentary methods of photography, filmmaking, oral history, folklore, and writing as catalysts for education and change. In his role as Associate Director, Greg manages all financial aspects of CDS, along with oversight of HR, physical plant, legal and tax aspects of CDS operations.
Linda Burton
Board of Directors
Linda M. Burton is a former dean of social sciences and currently the director of the Center for Child and Family Policy, the James B. Duke Professor of Sociology, and professor of public policy at Duke University.
Harlan Campbell
Photography and Digital Arts Associate
Harlan Campbell is the photography and digital arts associate at the Center for Documentary Studies. He has a degree in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
William H. Chafe
Board of Directors
William H. Chafe attended Harvard College, where he graduated magna cum laude in history (1962), and Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in American history (1971).
Steven Cheek
Emerging Documentary Artist, Documentary Diversity Project
Steven describes some of his skills and interests: “I love to cook a lot of foods that I believe most people my age don’t know how to cook.
Allen Creech
Systems Administrator
Allen Creech has been a systems administrator for the the past eighteen years, thirteen of them at the Center for Documentary Studies. He also serves in that capacity for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and for Duke's MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program. Originally from Cary, North Carolina, Allen is a graduate of North Carolina State University.
Jamila R. Davenport
Operations Specialist
Jamila R. Davenport is an emerging multimedia documentarian who shares narratives digitally across internet platforms.
Amber Delgado
Exhibitions Intern
Amber Nicole Delgado recently completed her undergraduate studies at East Carolina University where she received a BFA in film/media production and a BA in art history.
Lois Deloatch
Board of Directors
Lois Deloatch has a nearly three-decade-long career in higher education, philanthropy, and the arts. After two decades as a fundraiser for Duke University, Deloatch served as vice chancellor for Institutional Advancement and executive director of the NCCU Foundation at North Carolina Central University.
Myron Dewey
Spring 2019 Lehman Brady Professor
Myron Dewey is a filmmaker, journalist, digital storyteller, and the founder of Digital Smoke Signals, a media production company that aims to give a platform to indigenous voices in media.
Alexa Dilworth
Publishing Director and Senior Editor
Alexa Dilworth is publishing director and senior editor at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University, where she also directs the awards program, which includes the CDS/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography, the CDS Documentary Essay Prize in Writing and Photography, and the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize.
Christopher Everett
Communications Manager, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Christopher Everett is the communications manager of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. He is a film director, film producer, social media specialist and graphic artist from Laurinburg, North Carolina.
Gail Exum
Business Manager
Gail Exum is the business manager for the Center for Documentary Studies and the MFA/EDA. She came to CDS from the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, formally Doc Arts, Inc., where she had been business manager since 2007.
Robert Fippinger
Board of Directors
Robert A. Fippinger, a resident of New York City, was a partner and senior counsel of the New York office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, a law firm, until 2015.
Lana Garland
Instructor
Lana Garland has worked as a Creative Director, Director, and Writer/Producer in television and film in the US and Europe. Her work has included content for HBO, BET, and ESPN in America, and TV2 in Denmark.
Jaki Shelton Green
Instructor
Jaki Shelton Green is a writer and poet, a North Carolina native whose publications include Dead on Arrival, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Masks, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, Blue Opal (a play), and Feeding the Light.
Mara Guevarra
Digital Marketing and Projects Manager
As Digital Marketing and Projects Manager, Mara works in social media management and digital content creation as part of the Center for Documentary Studies’ Communications Team. She is particularly interested in using immersive technology in order to document the future and propose new realities.
Mike Gulley
Development Director
Mike Gulley is the development director at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS). He has more than eighteen years of experience and expertise in nonprofit fundraising, organizational growth, and relationship management. Mike has helped to grow capacity and fundraise for a number of organizations both here in the Triangle and also during his time living in California’s Bay Area.
Deirdre Haj
Director, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Engaging with local business leaders, Deirdre attracted the creation of the Full Frame Theater and its new offices. Deirdre implemented free monthly community screenings, and the A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy discussion venue.
Alex Harris
Professor of the Practice/Hine Fellows
Alex Harris is a photographer, writer, and teacher. He has photographed for extended periods in Cuba, the Inuit villages of Alaska, the Hispanic villages of northern New Mexico, and across the American South. He has taught at Duke for more than three decades through the Sanford School, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts Program.
Rahi Hasan
Continuing Education Coordinator
Rahi is an educator, organizer and multimedia artist, experimenting with ways to shift the power held by filmmakers over to the communities being recorded.
Gary Hawkins
Lecturing Fellow
Gary Hawkins is a writer and filmmaker whose work traverses many genres, fiction and nonfiction, experimental and traditional, finding its expression in a variety of forms – essay, prose, installation and cinema.
Bernard L. Herman
Board of Directors
Bernard L. Herman is the George B. Tindall Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, where he also serves on the art history faculty.
Katie Hyde
Lecturing Fellow
Katie Hyde is the director of Literacy Through Photography (LTP), a program based at the Center for Documentary Studies. In this capacity, she works closely with undergraduate students, community volunteers, and teachers and students in the Durham Public Schools.
Kimberly Jenkins
Board of Directors
Kimberly Jenkins currently serves as an active board member, angel investor, and coach to several early-stage companies in Durham/RTP and Silicon Valley.
Jonathan Jensen
Board of Directors
Jonathan Jensen has been a serial entrepreneur in media, real estate, and energy, and is currently trading commodities and managing an asset portfolio while taking time off to raise his two young sons with his wife, Amy.
Nancy Kalow
Lecturing Fellow
Nancy Kalow is a folklorist and filmmaker. She was a co-convener, with miriam cooke and Maha Houssami, of the Humanities Writ Large project, Arab Refugee Oral History: Collecting Life Narratives.
Caitlin Margaret Kelly
Director, Power Plant Gallery
Caitlin Margaret Kelly is an artist, runner, and devout coffee drinker. She is Director of the Power Plant Gallery at Duke University.
Randall Kenan
Board of Directors, Fall 2002-Spring 2003 Lehman Brady Professor
Randall Kenan is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC–Chapel Hill. His first novel, A Visitation of Spirits, was published by Grove Press in 1989.
Aaron Kutnick
UI+UX Designer, DocX
Aaron Kutnick received his MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University. He currently works as a digital content creator and user experience designer in the DocX Documentary Lab at the Center for Documentary Studies. He also teaches courses in experimental interface design and computational media. His work asks what ethnographic fieldwork looks like within the virtual spaces of the internet, and what kind of tools are best suited to meaningfully engage this rich, dynamic realm of cultural production.
EB Landesberg
Program Director, Hine Fellows
Elizabeth (EB) Landesberg is a filmmaker, multimedia artist and educator. In addition to co-directing the Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows Program, she is a producer and facilitator for Another Kind of Girl Collective, an expanding global media collective for young women living in displaced communities.
Peter Lange
Board of Directors, Chair
Peter Lange joined the Department of Political Science at Duke University in 1981 after a previous teaching position at Harvard University.
Michelle Lanier
Lecturing Fellow
Michelle Lanier, director of North Carolina’s African American Heritage Commission, has been an instructor at CDS since 2000. She uses her background as an oral historian and folklorist to connect communities around personal narratives and cultural expression.
Barbara Lau
Instructor
Barbara Lau is director of the Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center, an effort to activate history for social change inspired by the life and legacy of activist, poet, lawyer and Episcopal priest Pauli Murray.
Savannah Lennertz
Senior Development Associate, Full Frame Documentary Festival
Savannah Lennertz is the senior development associate for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, where she is responsible for sponsorships, grants, and individual giving.
Diane Britz Lotti
Board of Directors
Diane Britz Lotti is Chairman of American Capital Partners, an international investment company with investments in Europe, South America, and the United States.
Thomas Mann
Board of Directors
Thomas (Tom) Mann is retired Associate Dean for Finance and Administration in Arts and Sciences and Trinity College at Duke University. He served in this role managing budgets and finance from 1982 until 2007, working with seven Arts and Sciences deans.
Xaris A. Martínez
Assistant to the Director
Xaris (pronounced HA-ri'z) A. Martínez is the assistant to the director of the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University.
Danita Mason-Hogans
Project Coordinator, Critical Oral Histories
Danita Mason-Hogans is a native of Chapel Hill NC for seven generations on both sides of her family. She is a curriculum specialist with a theater arts background and has been an education activist for thirty years. She is employed with the Center for Documentary Studies where she serves as Program Manager for the Critical Oral Histories Component. Her current projects involve working with veteran Civil Rights activists in order to document their experiences and transform them into K-12 Civil Rights components. She was the organizer for the national 2015 One Person One Vote voting rights conference and works with school systems, universities, activists and historians to document local and national history from the “inside out” and from the “bottom up”.
Lisa McCarty
Curator of the Archives of Documentary Arts, Instructor
Lisa McCarty’s work as a photographer, filmmaker, curator, and educator is driven by her interest in the origins of photography. She is particularly interested in how technology influences image production, as well as the material and associative evolution of images.
Quadiriah McCullough
Operations Coordinator
Quadiriah McCullough has been the operations coordinator at CDS since 2014. She oversees CDS’s physical plant and logistics at the Boiler Room event space and Full Frame Theater at American Tobacco.
S. Charmaine McKissick-Melton
Board of Directors
S. Charmaine McKissick-Melton is associate professor and former interim chair in the Department of Mass Communication at North Carolina Central University, and a 2017–18 NCCU-Duke Digital Humanities Fellow.
Lynn McKnight
Associate Director for Programs and Development
After a career in journalism, Lynn McKnight returned to her Duke alma mater in 1998 to join the CDS team building a dynamic place devoted to the documentary arts.
First serving as communications director, over the years she added external relations, program planning and management, and development to her duties. She has degrees from Duke University (public policy) and the University of Mississippi (southern studies) and has completed graduate studies in communications at the University of Florida.
Julie Morris
Board of Directors
Julie Morris is a longtime leader and advocate for the arts nationwide.
Paul A. Newman Jr.
Emerging Documentary Artist, Documentary Diversity Project
Paul is a Connecticut-born, North Carolina–bred artist.
William Page
Coordinator, Documentary Diversity Project
William is a proud Durham native and self-described book nerd (come talk with him about Octavia Butler!). At CDS, he coordinates the Documentary Diversity Project (DDP), an effort to promote greater racial diversity and equity within the documentary arts. His responsibilities include coordinating support for emerging and more-established documentary artists from marginalized groups enhancing their portfolios while in residence at CDS.
Dan Partridge
Production Co-Director, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Dan Partridge is the production co-director for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. He has served as the research associate for the Jazz Loft Project at the Center for Documentary Studies, beginning in 2003. From 2000–2002, he was the CDS exhibitions and public programs assistant.
James Peacock
Board of Directors
James L. Peacock is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Comparative Literature, Co-Director of the Duke–UNC Rotary Center for Peace and Conflict, and Chair of World View at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Liz Phillips
Communications Director
Elizabeth (Liz) Phillips is communications director at the Center for Documentary Studies. This is her second stint at CDS; in 1993, while working as a writer/editor at a government-issue government job in D.C., a friend told her about a new magazine starting up at a place called the Center for Documentary Studies.
Susie Post-Rust
Lecturing Fellow
Post-Rust has taught at Duke since 2006. Her courses enable Duke Students to engage with the community outside university. She works to impart the experience of producing in-depth visual storytelling to her students. Most of her courses are service learning and involve a component of giving back to the community.
Angie Potiny
Development Assistant
Angie Potiny is the Development Assistant for both CDS and Full Frame. She received her degree in Communications and Women’s Studies from UNC-CH.
Karen Price
Instructor
In addition to teaching, Price directs the Duke in Los Angeles undergraduate semester away program. She received an MFA in production from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, an MA in creative writing and English from Hollins University, and an AB in English and political science from Duke.
Tom Rankin
Professor of the Practice/Director, MFAEDA
Tom Rankin is Professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University where he directs the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts. For 15 years he was director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. Rankin is formerly Associate Professor of Art and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi and Chair of the Art Department at Delta State University.
Benjamin D. Reese Jr.
Board of Directors
Benjamin D. Reese Jr. is vice president of the Office for Institutional Equity at Duke University and Duke University Health System, Duke University's Chief Diversity Officer, and is a licensed clinical psychologist.
Courtney Reid-Eaton
Exhibitions Director / Creative Director, Documentary Diversity Project
Courtney Reid-Eaton is a culture worker, creative engine, spouse, mother, and Black Feminist. She has been the exhibitions director at CDS since 2001, overseeing the selection, scheduling, curation, design, and installation of exhibits in all of the Center’s galleries and organizing related public programs; she also serves as the creative director of CDS’s pilot Documentary Diversity Project.
Sally Robinson
Board of Directors
Sally Robinson is a lifelong resident of Charlotte. She has had a love affair with Duke University ever since she came with her family to Duke football games in the early 1940s.
Kate Rogers
Programming Coordinator, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Kate Rogers joined Full Frame as programming coordinator in October 2016 and is responsible for managing the submission process, the selection committee process, print traffic, and awards juries.
Sherrill Roland
2018–19 Post-MFA Fellow in the Documentary Arts
Roland is a North Carolina native—born in Asheville and currently living in Raleigh—who received a BFA in design and MFA in studio art from the University of North Carolina–Greensboro. As he describes his work, Roland “creates art that challenges ideas around controversial social and political constructs, and generates a safe space to process, question, and share.”
Elena Rue
Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow 2005-2006, Project Manager, Instructor
Elena Rue completed the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) Certificate program offered in conjunction with Duke Continuing Studies.
Margaret Sartor
Instructor
Margaret Sartor is a photographer and writer whose past projects include What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney (with co-editor Geoff Dyer) and the best-selling memoir Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing up in the 1970s.
MJ Sharp
Lecturing Fellow
MJ Sharp is a documentary and fine arts photographer based in North Carolina.
Lani Simeona
Production Co-Director, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Lani Simeona is the Production Co-Director for the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Lani joined the Full Frame team in 2007 as Office Manager, became the Artist Services Coordinator and Communications Manager in 2011, and Production Co-Director in 2014. As Production Co-Director, she is responsible for festival and year-round ticketing, volunteer selection and training, filmmaker transportation and lodging, venue selection and build out, and technical and IT support. Prior to Full Frame, Lani studied film and theater at Florida State University and the University of Central Florida, was a tour guide and trainer for the Walt Disney World Resort, and spent 10 years in music retail management, merchandising, and music buying before making the move from Florida to Durham, North Carolina.
Christopher Sims
Director of Undergraduate Education/Lecturing Fellow, Fall 2017 Lehman Brady Fellow
Christopher Sims is the Undergraduate Educator Director at the Center for Documentary Studies and a Lecturing Fellow in Documentary Arts. He has worked as a photo archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and, at CDS, has coordinated the exhibition, awards, and web programs.
Ashley Solesbee
Education Coordinator, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Ashley Solesbee is the education coordinator at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Ashley is responsible for Full Frame’s Teach the Teachers Professional Development program, the School of Doc Summer Program for high school students, and the annual Youth Screening event at the Carolina Theatre. Ashley is also part of the pilot partnership with PBS’s POV program, where she will be hosting a webinar on how to successfully integrate documentary film in the classroom.
Laurids Sonne
Photography and Digital Arts Associate
Laurids Andersen Sonne is a Danish interdisciplinary artist. Laurids’ work spans film, video, installation, sculpture, performance and socially engaged art. Laurids sees art as
Shameeka Thomas
Night Manager
Shameeka Thomas is a Night Manager (Front Desk Attendant) and Event Manager at the Center for Documentary Studies. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with a Master of Business Administration degree in 2013. She also has a Bachelor of Science degree with an emphasis in IT.
Charlie Thompson
Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies
Charles D. Thompson, Jr. is Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke University. A common thread through his work is a deep concern for people doing their all to have a voice in our agricultural systems.
Sadie Tillery
Artistic Director, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Sadie Tillery is the artistic director of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Sadie joined the programming department in 2005 and became director in 2008.
Kevin A. Tolson
Board of Directors
Kevin A. Tolson works in brand marketing management for Unilever and is a graduate of the New York University Stern School of Business.
Tim Tyson
Senior Research Scholar
Timothy B. Tyson is senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina.
April Walton
Continuing Education Director
April Walton is director of continuing education at the Center for Documentary Studies. She has worked at CDS for over fifteen years, starting as night manager. Growing up in the mountains of North Carolina, April was drawn to the stories of real people told through oral histories, regional music, and materials.
Marie Washington
Board of Directors
Marie Washington has held senior financial leadership positions within the corporate and nonprofit sectors in New York City and San Francisco over her thirty-year professional career.
Greg Weaver II
Emerging Documentary Artist, Documentary Diversity Project
Greg is a skateboarder, photographer, and writer.
Deborah Willis
Board of Directors, Fall 2000-Spring 2001 Lehman-Brady Professor
Deborah Willis, Ph.D., is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, Africana Studies, where
David Wong
Accounting Specialist
David is responsible for various accounting functions at CDS: paying vendors, paying employees, booking credit card receipts, depositing checks, and the like. He is a grad- uate of the University of Virginia with a degree in music, and by meanderings came to administrative work.