Lindsay, Jenn

Loading...
Profile Picture
Institutional profile
Jenn Lindsay is a social scientist, documentary filmmaker, and musician whose work explores social diversity, intercultural relations, community building, personal transformation and social change movements. She earned her Ph.D. from Boston University in the social science of religion, conducting ethnographic analysis of interreligious dialogue in Rome and in the Middle East, published in 2021 with the release of her book Pluralismo Vivo - Lived Religious Pluralism and Interfaith Dialogue in Rome. She also earned a Master of Divinity degree with an emphasis in Interfaith Relations at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, studied Playwriting at Stanford University and Theatre Management at Yale University School of Drama. Jenn Lindsay is also the Co-Founder and CEO of So Fare Films, a film production company in Rome which creates media about social diversity and offers an internship program for professional formation in media business, marketing, and production. For ten years prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Dr. Lindsay worked in the film and music industries in New York City, producing ten studio albums and serving as a story editor for MTV and the Sundance Channel. She has screened her films throughout the world, the topics ranging from an African Buddhist monk’s life and teachings, computer scientists simulating the spread of religious terrorism, the Indonesian Muslim headscarf, atheist Jews from Boston, and Italian hippies building artistic nativity displays. She served for six years as the video documentarian for the Center for Mind and Culture.

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Documentary Film as Interreligious Dialogue: A Cognitive Perspective
    (2023) Lindsay, Jenn
    Research and personal experience affirm that watching a movie can change the way someone lives their life. Documentary storytelling is a multidimensional change agent, a digital media artifact that is rooted in real communities, real lives, and real stories. Because documentary is rooted in the human social world, watching it is a cognitively, psychologically, emotionally, socially, and politically complicated act. Thus, it is a potent medium for stimulating discourse, reflection, and behavioral change. This article explores the power of visual storytelling and positive media representation as a Parasocial-Relational form of interreligious dialogue and delves into practical application as it contemplates best practices for how filmmakers might harness that power, reviewing literature on the possible social, cognitive, and neurobiological impact of documentary. This interdisciplinary cognitive-sociological theory of change posits documentary film as a lever for increased interreligious competence because of its unique ability to disarm with visual storytelling and engaging characters, leading to a potentially reflexive experience of humanization and perceptual shift.
  • Publication
    Interfaith Dialogue and Humanization of the Religious Other: Discourse and Action
    (2020) Lindsay, Jenn
    Humanization is a frequently invoked goal of interfaith dialogue—but what does it mean to dialoguers to be “human,” let alone to make each person more human? This article takes a close look at the common discourses of interfaith dialoguers, and how those discourses are translated into action. Drawing on observed vignettes and reflections from ethnographic interviews across geopolitical contexts, the article conceptualizes humanization as a discursive object of the interfaith society that dialoguers invoke to enhance group solidarity and express collective identity in the form of their sacred values. By frequently invoking the concept of humanization, interfaith dialogues signal to each other that they are uniting around a common goal. Specifically, the article investigates normative discourses regarding “humanization” of the religious other and how the practice of exchanging narratives facilitates humanization and the cultivation of empathy. Through this data we can see that “humanization” is a common discursive goal of dialoguers. In Italy, humanization is a matter of disconfirming stereotypes and alleviating ignorance across social divides, whereas in the Middle East humanization intensifies into a commitment to not physically harm the other, who is recognized through the course of intergroup engagement as sharing a common ground of experience and complexity with the other. Dialoguers say humanization can be achieved through non-discursive relational practices such as artistic collaboration, shared silence, humor or cognitive re-framing, but most often through narrative storytelling.