Response Paper

Living Jerusalem                                                                                           Ethan Bennett

Final Response Paper

            After a semester of participating in the “Living Jerusalem” project by way of a class at Indiana University, I have a multitude of reactions. Overall, the class was incredible. I came to the class with quite a large expanse of knowledge on the topic of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, with great interest in the politics, culture, and society of each entity. Though, while I lived in Jerusalem for 6 months, I did not have quite as specific familiarity with Jerusalem as I would’ve liked.

            The great thing about this class was that through learning in depth about Jerusalem, we engaged in discussion, academic discourse, and debate on the greater socio-political conflict. Jerusalem became the microcosm on which all other knowledge was understood, as the small city offers so much in terms of politics, culture, people, history, and more.

            Though despite the focus on Jerusalem, the class was very flexible and it was always exciting coming to class because the nature of the class allowed us, the students, to engage in discourse about a variety of topics amongst ourselves and with others, such as academics from around the world. We quickly found ourselves comfortable enough with each other and the nature of the class that we were able to diverge from outlined topics as we delved into specific elements of the Middle Eastern conflict in discussions from which our knowledge greatly benefitted and our beliefs were very frequently challenged.

            Overall, I am very happy with this class. This below sections will each outline reflections and suggestions that I have on specific parts of the class.

Blogging

            I have never kept a blog for a class before, and it was an interesting way of interacting with course material. It definitely was an effective way at forcing students to keep up with the reading, as each reading required a written response. I liked that I could add my very personal anecdotes as I responded to the readings, but I did feel quite overwhelmed with this aspect of the class, especially at the beginning of the semester.

            Taking into consideration the nature of a new type of homework, it was difficult to meet deadlines that were not in line with class times. In addition, while each time I was able to read other classmates’ blogs I was intrigued and challenged, the expectation to read a certain number of blogs per week AND comment was quite burdening. I would’ve rather had more opportunity to respond to blog posts in class and use ideas projected in blogs more often as class discussion triggers. When simply responding via the blogs comments section, I often felt like my comments went unnoticed, as did many other students. While the idea of holding discussions over the blogs is great, it was unrealistic for students to keep up with that many levels of blogging, responding, and responding again.

Readings

            I thought that the readings were a bit repetitive at times. While I found the book by Karen Armstrong to be complete and relatively unbiased, I felt that the immense focus on history might have been a little excessive. This may just be personal, as I tend to only take history into minor consideration and rather look at the present situation and conflict. Nonetheless, Armstrong’s book was just a little dry for my liking.

            Inversely, the supplemental readings such as those by Edward Said were a great addition to the readings. The smaller personal narratives that we read helped understand the emotion that stands behind so much of the opinion and conflict in Israel and Palestine. I also really enjoyed when we had the opportunity to watch videos in place of readings. Being a very visual person, I feel that when I am able to see what a person is talking about, I can much more easily place myself in that narrative, and further understand the emotion and feeling behind a story. I actually would have liked more videos, especially as we looked at the modern social situation and subjects such as gender and sexuality rights, as it would have helped the class better visualize the reality of Israel and Palestine in the modern day, as opposed to the images so beautifully portrayed by Karen Armstrong.

            One suggestion that I have with readings is that it would have been nice to offer readings more relevant to the end of semester group presentations. If our groups had more time to plan towards the first half of the semester, we could have even brought our own readings to the table and used class discussion and reactions to alternative, presentation related readings in order to better adapt and shape our presentations.

Guest Speakers

            I found the guests we spoke with to be an amazing addition to the class, one that very few other classes offer. The opportunity to hear the personal narratives of individuals who are directly involved in the matters about which we were learning allowed us to further relate to stories and emotions.

            One note is that I felt there was a Pro-Palestinian (for lack of a better word) bias when it came to guests of the Palestinian nature. While it was very beneficial to hear these voices, I felt that it tended to blame and criticize Israel more often than not, and portrayed a slightly unequal legal and political playing field. I would have loved to hear from figures on both sides, such as actual Political figures, who could offer (albeit possibly very biased) opinions that are directly representative of each group, rather than some who claim to be neutral but don’t actually come off that way.

            With this, I feel that eliminating some of US-based guests in order to allow more speakers from Israel and Palestinian would have been very interesting. In terms of hearing real life stories, this could help many formulate more direct opinions.

            On this note, I don’t have much to say about the videoconferencing with the OSU class other than I didn’t find it to benefit in any way and only added another technology barrier that frequently held us back from moving forward as a class.

Presentations

            The presentations were quite a treat at the end of the semester. I loved to learn from fellow students and see how each student really feels about specific topics for which they are passionate. I felt that all of the presentations were very well put together and informative, even if they were quite biased at times.

            One issue with these is that I would have loved to see more time for group presentations. I personally felt very rushed in my presentation, and felt that some of the presentations did not have time to fully present the topics. Maybe cutting the expectations and pushing groups to focus on tighter, more manageable topics would have helped with this. On this note, while we did have time for questions and responses to presentations days after all were finished, this hindered students’ responses and inquisition to presentations because the energy was no longer the same as during or right after the presentations and the information was not as fresh in our minds.

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    As started earlier, I absolutely loved participating in this class. The topics we discussed, the people we met, and the in class discussions challenged my views, pushed me to thing harder, and taught me a lot. I hope that along with the rest of the class, I will continue to move down the road of understanding we began in the class. While I am unsure if I will ever fully understand every detail, I hope to continue to ask and challenge others’ opinions while being questioned and challenged myself.