CDS Courses Instructors
Kamal Badhey
CDS Courses Instructor, Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow 2016-2017
Kamal Badhey is a photographer, educator and visual urbanist from New York. She has focused on ideas of dispersal, diaspora and origin pilgrimages, using photography and the narratives of places, people, and objects to stitch together stories.
Randy Benson
CDS Courses Instructor
Randolph Benson is a graduate of Wake Forest University and of the North Carolina School of the Arts’ School of Filmmaking.
Josh Dasal
CDS Courses Instructor
Josh Dasal has served as an instructor at the CDS continuing education program, CDS Courses since 2010.
Hal Goodtree
CDS Courses Instructor
Hal Goodtree is an Emmy and Cannes Lion award winning filmmaker who has worked with James Earl Jones, Cindy Crawford, The New York Times and the National Football League. His latest project, “Shaw Rising: The story of the oldest HBCU in the South” is now streaming on PBS.
Perrin Kerns
CDS Courses Instructor
Perrin Kerns has been teaching creative writing for over thirty years. She currently teaches literature, creative writing, and digital storytelling at Prescott College, Portland State University, Clark College, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Fishtrap Writers Conference, and Literary Arts.
Nazanin Knudson
CDS Courses Instructor
Nazanin Knudsen is a filmmaker and an educator with over fourteen years of experience in film and media production. She has produced short films and documentaries for public television, nonprofit institutes, and corporate media.
Sara Nodjoumi
CDS Courses Instructor
Sara Nodjoumi is a film producer, director, educator, and festival programmer.
Renzo Ortega
CDS Courses Instructor
Renzo Ortega (Lima, Perú 1974) is an artist based in Carrboro, North Carolina. Renzo received a BFA in painting from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes del Perú (1999), studied at the Art Students League of New York (2000–04), and has his MFA in painting from Hunter College (2014).
Robert Pluma
CDS Courses Instructor
Robert Pluma is a multidisciplinary artist, documentarian, and creative technologist dedicated to creating intimate, sensitive work to confront inequity and challenge power.
Joy Salyers
CDS Courses Instructor
Joy M. Salyers is a folklorist, life coach, mother, researcher, teacher, theorist, and witch in the woods. Her classes reflect her passion for systems theory, intersectionality, justice, and "dealing with the real" with love and hope.
Aaron Smithers
CDS Courses Instructor
Aaron Smithers is a folklorist with a background in documentary studies and television and radio production.