Jeanne Jordan

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Jeanne Jordan has been making documentary and dramatic films for twenty years, including the groundbreaking civil rights series Eyes on the Prize, numerous films for The American Experience, Frontline, and Nova, and the Emmy-winning dramatic series Concealed Enemies, on the trials of Alger Hiss. The Independent, a film industry monthly, said of Jordan’s résumé, “it reads like PBS’s greatest hits.” For the past ten years, she has been working in collaboration with her husband, Steven Ascher. Their film Troublesome Creek, about the Jordan family farm in Iowa, was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

During her Radcliffe fellowship year, Jordan will edit a feature-length documentary film, “The Heywood Boys,” about two brothers and their families who are battling the fatal neural disease ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Jordan and Ascher have been filming the Heywoods for two years as they boldly attempt to reshape the course of ALS treatment. At Radcliffe, Jordan will craft this footage into a film about a family in crisis, cutting-edge science, the politics of medicine, and a remarkable effort to undo a death sentence.

Jordan graduated from the University of Iowa and began her career at Iowa Public Television. She was a 1992–1993 Bunting fellow at Radcliffe. Her other honors include a Peabody Award, a Dupont-Columbia Award, the Prix Italia, three Emmy Awards and three nominations, a Director’s Guild of America nomination, and an International Documentary Association Distinguished Achievement Award.