Center for Documentary Studies
nonprofit support corporation of Duke University
The Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit support corporation of Duke University dedicated to the documentary arts. Having been created in 1989 through an endowment from the Lyndhurst Foundation, the organization’s founders were Robert Coles, William Chafe, Alex Harris, and Iris Tillman Hill. In 1994, CDS moved into a renovated nineteenth-century home, named it the Lyndhurst House. That structure and a large addition house the main activities of CDS on the edge of Duke University’s campus in Durham, North Carolina. The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, a CDS program, has its offices on the American Tobacco Campus in the American Tobacco Historic District in downtown Durham.
The Center for Documentary Studies has had four directors since its founding: Iris Tillman Hill (1990–98), Tom Rankin (1998–2013), Wesley Hogan (2013–2021), and Opeyemi Olukemi (2021–present). With support from the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the organization held a 25th-anniversary event in 2015. The three-day forum, Documentary 2015: Origins and Inventions, included panellists and honorees from the documentary mediums that CDS is rooted in—photography, writing, audio, and film/video. Honorees included the Kitchen Sisters, Natasha Trethewey, John Cohen, and Samuel D. Pollard.
Staff and faculty at CDS teach, produce, support, and present the documentary arts.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Center for Documentary Studies” is nonprofit support corporation of Duke University. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Center, Documentary and Studies, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “nonprofit support corporation of Duke University” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55606821. VIAF identifies the subject as 150949156. The Library of Congress control number is nr90003921. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1994, 1990 and 1998.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Center for Documentary Studies”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Center for Documentary Studies primary sources, Center for Documentary Studies archive and Center research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Center for Documentary Studies”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Center for Documentary Studies” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.