Biography

Jenn Lindsay is an anthropologist, filmmaker, and PhD student in Religion and Society at Boston University. Her CV is available here and her writings can be accessed here. Click here to view Jenn Lindsay's ethnographic documentaries! Her advisor is the prominent sociologist Nancy Ammerman. She studied Interfaith Relations and Ecumenics (MDiv '11) at Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University in New York City, where she was co-chair of the Interfaith Caucus and the Chair of Student Activities (AKA the Minister of Fun). At Boston University, Jenn studies how religious difference affects personal relationships--families, friendships and in interfaith dialogue. She is also interested in popular discourse about religious difference and its impact upon religious practice, personal identity, and daily life. Her current research on community-level interreligious activity is based in Rome, Italy. She has also conducted extensive research on healing practices in Hindu and Christian Scientist communities in Boston; secular humanist Jewish communities; the Muslim headscarf industry in Jogjakarta, Indonesia; the religious souvenir industry in Rome; American mid-western monastic eco-spirituality movements; and the role of religion in the Occupy Wall Street movement. She uses her research and films to encourage reflection about religion “outside the box,” fostering interreligious collaboration and healthier human exchanges, and educating individuals and religious leaders about the realities and demands of “street-level pluralism” in increasingly diverse communities.

Jenn’s fieldwork with interreligious couples and families spans North America, Indonesia and Italy; in Summer 2012 she was sponsored by the American Society for Psychological Anthropology to study intermarriage among Roman Jews. She has also conducted ethnoastronomy fieldwork with indigenous communities in Northern Peru, charting how locals syncretically combine naturistic Pachamama spirit imagery with imported Catholic images to interpret celestial phenomena such as constellations, eclipses, and weather patterns. Her ethnographic and interdisciplinary research combines perspectives from social theory, cultural anthropology, depth and cognitive psychology, neuroscience, sociology of religion, liberal and neo-liberal Christian theology, esoteric mysticism, Jewish studies, and interpersonal ethics.

View Jenn Lindsay's curriculum vitae here and her writings here.