Instructors
John Biewen
Audio Program Director/Instructor
John Biewen (he/him) is audio program director at CDS and host of the Center’s audio documentary podcast, Scene on Radio. During a thirty-plus-year career as an audio journalist and documentary-maker, he has told stories from forty American states and from Europe, Japan, and India.
Alex Harris
Professor Emeritus
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 taught at Duke for almost forty years through the Sanford School, the Center for Documentary Studies, and the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts Program until his retirement (professor emeritus) in summer 2019.
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.
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.
Michelle Lanier
Lecturing Fellow, CDS Courses Instructor
An Afro-Carolinian folklorist, Michelle Lanier has been an instructor at CDS since 2000. Michelle is the first person of color to direct the twenty-five sites, battlefields, and museums of the NC Division of State Historic Sites and Properties. She also served as the founding executive director of North Carolina’s African American Heritage Commission.
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.
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.
Christopher Sims
Undergraduate Education Director/Associate Professor of the Practice, 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.
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.
