Dr Janice (Jan) Haaken is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker. She received audience awards at major film festivals in 2019 for her previous documentary, Our Bodies Our Doctors. Her recent project—NECESSITY Part I: Oil, Water & Climate Resistance and NECESSITY Part II: Climate Justice & The Thin Green Line—was selected by the Doc Society NYC as part of the 2019 Inaugural Climate Story Lab where Janice and co-director Samantha Praus joined the lab as fellows. Janice also taught visual methods in the social sciences and screened a number of her films as a Fulbright Scholar at University College Cork in Ireland in Winter term 2020.
Prior to NECESSITY, Janice directed six feature films, including Our Bodies Our Doctors (2019), Milk Men: The Life and Times of Dairy Farmers (2016), Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front Lines (2014), Guilty Except for Insanity (2008), Queens of Heart: Community Therapists in Drag (2006) and Diamonds, Guns and Rice (2005). Her films focus on social problems that stir public controversy and on stressful jobs performed in liminal spaces and on the social margins. From refugee camps, war zones, psychiatric hospitals and abortion clinics to dairy farms, drag bars and hip-hop clubs, her documentaries focus on people working in various border zones and their insights on the world around them. For information on her films, go to www.jhaaken.com.
Janice has published extensively in the areas of psychoanalysis and feminism, the history of psychiatric diagnosis, the psychology of storytelling, group responses to violence, the dynamics of social change, and documentary methods. Her books include Psychiatry, Politics and PTSD: Breaking Down (2021), Hard Knocks: Domestic Violence and the Psychology of Storytelling (2010) and Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory and the Perils of Looking Back (2000).