Jenn Lindsay (born October 18, 1978, in Amarillo, Texas) is an American social scientist, adjunct professor of Sociology and Communications, documentary filmmaker, video journalist and singer-songwriter currently based in Rome, Italy. Her work focuses on the exploration of social diversity, community building, personal transformation, and social change movements.
She has produced and directed eight documentary feature-length and short subject films, among which the award-winning Quarantined Faith, and co-founded the production company So Fare Films in 2016. She is also an anti-folk singer-songwriter, having produced ten studio albums under her label No Evil Star Records (2001-2011).
She earned a BA in playwriting (2001) from Stanford University, including a study abroad in playwriting and directing at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts in 2000, and attended the arts management MFA program at Yale School of Drama (2004–2005) but did not graduate. She earned a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) in Interfaith Relations and Ecumenism from Union Theological Seminary of Columbia University (2011) and completed an advanced diploma course in Sociological Methods and Theories jointly administered by Roma Tre University, Sapienza University and Tor Vergata University (2017). She completed her Ph.D. in 2018 at Boston University in the Graduate Division of Religious Studies, under adviser Nancy Ammerman. She is currently a professor of Sociology and Communications at John Cabot University, and also teaches at the Rome campuses of St. John's University (New York City), the University of California Education Abroad Program, and Richmond University.
Biography
Jenn Lindsay was born in Amarillo, Texas and moved with her family to San Diego, California at the age of two. From 1985 to 1990 she was involved in musical theater productions with San Diego County's Christian Youth Theater and Christian Community Theater.
She lived in New York City from 2001 to 2011, in Boston 2011–2014, and in 2014 moved to Rome to work at Confronti Magazine and conduct doctoral research on interfaith dialogue in Italy and the Middle East.
At the age of 13, Lindsay followed her curiosity about her Jewish heritage into commitment to progressive Judaism, formally converting at age 17. Her Jewish involvement began at the Stanford University Hillel. In the summer of 2001, she worked as the Program Director at Lights in Action. From 2007 to 2008, she was a Development Associate at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah. In Summer 2008, she was the music director at a B'nai B'rith Youth Organization summer camp near Milwaukee. From 2011 to 2013, she was the teacher for the Bar/Bat Mitzvah year of the Boston Workmen's Circle Sunday School. In Rome, she has written about her involvement in the emergent progressive Jewish community Beth Hillel.
Filmmaking career
Between 2005 and 2008, Jenn Lindsay worked in the film and music industries as a documentary filmmaker, film editor and composer at MTV, the Sundance Channel, and several independent post-production facilities, serving as an Assistant Story Editor on the MTV reality show 8th and Ocean, Atmosphere Picture's Trek Nation, a biographical documentary about Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. She worked as an Assistant Editor with Zak Tucker on The Garden (Harbor Picture), previously known as Body & Soul by Swede Films. She was the founder and producing director of Get Thee to a Nunnery Productions, her independent film production company (2005-2017), and in 2016, she conceptualized So Fare Films in Rome with other female filmmakers, the production company she is currently directing.
In 2011, she wrote, produced and directed Jilbab, a 36-minute documentary on veiling trends for Muslim women in Jogjakarta Indonesia. It has screened in many Boston University classrooms, as well as in the Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority Lecture Series (Boston 2011), the American Academy of Religion Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting (Rutgers NJ 2012), the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting Film Series, Chicago 2012), and the International Society for the Sociology of Religion Film Series (Turku, Finland 2013).
In July 2012, she headed a film team to produce a short film about the International Political Camp at Agape Centro Ecumenico, featuring interviews with community members, eco-activists, scientists, and conference organizers, about environmental activism and the larger issue of grassroots activism and communities.