Comprised of photographs, oral history, narratives, folklore, films, fiction, music, poetry, art and other forms, documentary provides ways for audiences to access stories that would go untold but for the work of the documentarian: Jacob Riis' turn of the century photographs of New York's Lower East Side, Agee and Walker's study of white southern poverty, Danny Lyon's photos of the civil rights movement, or Spike Lee's film about the murder of four black girls in Birmingham, Alabama. From its beginnings, documentary served to engender a progressive agenda by projecting the voices of the voiceless in order to illuminate the need for social change and spur the audience to action. But documentary also provides a way to access history, both the setting where the document was created and the subject it describes. This course examines the historical development of documentary forms, reviews and critiques the work of specific documentarians, facilitates historical research in non-traditional sources, and encourages students to develop a documentary skill.