Chris Sims Named Director of Duke CDS, and more...

June 3, 2024

We are honored to share two news items regarding Graduate Liberal Studies teaching faculty member Christopher W. Sims. 

Sims has been named to lead, as the next Director of the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS).

The Center for Documentary Studies teaches, engages in, and presents documentary work grounded in collaborative partnerships and extended fieldwork using photography, film/video, audio, narrative writing, and experimental and new media to capture and convey contemporary memory, life, and culture.

Chis SIms teaches the recurring GLS course, "Documentary Explorations", introducing students to strategies for conducting documentary fieldwork and archival research with various tools and mediums. The course focuses on identifying and analyzing the ethical and aesthetic considerations related to representing and exhibiting the lives and stories of others, and/or ourselves. The Fall 2024 semester offering will include a special module connected to the observance of Duke’s Centennial. This module will focus on creating oral history interviews and related material with Duke-connected veterans of US military engagements abroad from 2001 to the present day.

Learn more in the recent Duke Today article and join us in congratulating Chistopher Sims on this well-deserved and fitting recognition!

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In other news, as a 2022-23 Duke Reuben-Cooke Fellow, Sims led a project in collaboration with Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina poet laureate and a native of nearby Alamance County. In his course titled “Ethics and Equity in Media, Documentary, and Technology,” Sims and 31 master’s students in public policy focused on Alamance County. They aimed to explore historical and ethical questions at the heart of contemporary racial and class inequality, producing the student-led podcast, 'Blue Mud'. Read more about this project and the Reuben-Cooke Fellows here.