Jan Krawitz in the Netherlands

The Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities, Emerita, Jan Krawitz taught in the MFA Program in Documentary Film at Stanford for 34 years. She is also an award-winning documentary film maker whose films explore eclectic topics and reflect her interest in overlooked aspects of American culture. They have screened at festivals in the United States and abroad, including Sundance, the New York Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Edinburgh, AFI Docs, London, Sydney, Full Frame, and SXSW (South by Southwest). Additionally, she has had retrospectives of her films at the Portland Art Museum, Hood Museum of Art, Rice Media Center, the Austin Film Society, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Jan was awarded artist residencies at Yaddo, Docs in Progress, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and is currently a voting member of the Documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. In 2022, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Karl Franzens University of Graz in Austria. At Stanford, Jan received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching and a Faculty Research Fellowship from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She has taught at Stanford Overseas Studies programs in Oxford and Berlin as well as at Stanford in Washington and New York. She also has served as a faculty lecturer at Stanford Sierra Camp.

During this program, Professor Krawitz's lectures will delve into Dutch artistic traditions—including Vermeer's mysterious techniques, the windmill's journey from classical painting subject to modern sustainability symbol, and the Netherlands' influential documentary film movement. She will explore the photography of European masters and offer hands-on guidance for capturing compelling travel photographs.