Mary-Jane Doherty

Mary Jane Doherty, associate professor emerita, specializes in both the teaching and practice of her innovative approach to the narrative documentary.  Her films – about astrophysicists, young music students, Cuban ballet students, fisherwomen in Nova Scotia – have received solo theatrical awards, retrospectives and international festival recognition.  In 2017, Doherty received the Inaugural City of Boston Artist Fellowship.  Her research in sound and film pedagogy has sent her to international conferences, leading to three commissioned essays for academic publication.

Currently she is shifting focus to concentrate on both writing and filmmaking in equal measure; this to accommodate her solo wanderings around the world.  Doherty’s debut video-essay, ‘The Fishing Widows of Bay St Lawrence’ received Runner Up for the 2022 Montana Prize in Nonfiction and is featured in Pilgrim Online Magazine in 2023.  She recently finished filming Cosmic Coda, a project she started 35 years ago, featuring Nobel Prize Winner Rainer Weiss, and for which she received a 2022 LEF Foundation Grant.  In 2023, Doherty was awarded a St Botolph Fellowship.