Tom Rankin is Director of the Center for Documentary Studies and Associate Professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University.  A photographer, filmmaker, and folklorist, Rankin has been photographing and interpreting the American cultural landscape for nearly twenty years.  Formerly Associate Professor of Art and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi and Chair of the Art Department at Delta State University, he is a graduate of Tufts University (BA, summa cum laude, American History), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (MA, Folklore), and Georgia State University (MFA, Photography).

A native of Kentucky, his books include Sacred Space:  Photographs from the Mississippi Delta  (1993), which received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Photography; Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre':  Photographs of a River Life  (1995); Faulkner's World:  The Photographs of Martin J. Dain (1997); and Local Heroes Changing America: Indivisible (2000).  He is the co-director and co-producer of the documentary film Powerhouse for God.  His photographs have been collected and published, and included in numerous exhibitions.  He is a frequent writer and lecturer on  southern art, culture, and the documentary tradition.