The first readings about bringing Jerusalem to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival surprised me because when I first heard the idea about representing Jerusalem in a realistic and unbiased manner I immediately shut it down. Jerusalem is a complex city with subcultures that overlap and diverge in nearly every way in order to make Jerusalem. After reading the articles and the passion each researcher had about the subject, I wanted the project to work even though I had been warned about the outcome. Lack of funding seemed like a poor excuse for canceling the project and slightly unrealistic, but a donor might have backed out due to personal biases and opinions. The festival was to occur at a precarious time for peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, but realistically they could blame the cancellation of such a project attempted today on the same situation. There is never a perfect time to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it may have been easier for the United States to avoid the issue all together, but why start the project at all? I was frustrated to say the least because the project sounded like an idealistic one, but I was interested to see and hear about the specifics about what people think defines Jerusalemite culture.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Webjournal Journal Assignment 1
Going into Living Jerusalem, I had no idea of what to expect. Reading the syllabus and hearing from Dr. Horowitz about the blog format of the class was daunting and intimidating. Blogging is something entirely foreign to me and the thought of multiple people reading what I write and how I feel about a controversial issue makes me cringe, but I know that I will be better for confronting this fear of mine. The class will hopefully make all me and the students in the class more sensitive to opposing viewpoints. It should hopefully teach us how to respond to articles and other blogposts online, which is becoming a very popular format for scholarly articles and other journals and are taken seriously within academic communities. As I have a lot of schooling ahead of me, I will attempt to use my blog and the comments I post in order to add alternative viewpoints and disagree if I feel it is necessary.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I really felt like you hit this spot on when you said that the reality is that never will be a perfect time to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If that in fact was a reason why the festival never happened (in addition to financial reasons) it is a shame. Who knows, maybe if the festival happened more people would have been educated about the conflict and maybe a movement towards peace in Jerusalem would have gained publicity. Then again you could always look at the same situation and say that the festival could have caused even more conflict. Either way, it proves your statement correct-there will never be a perfect time to talk about the conflict in Jerusalem.
ReplyDelete