A West Virginia University alumna with a passion for storytelling and exploring cultural similarities between Appalachia and the Arab world is the recipient of a prestigious Fulbright scholarship.
Clara Haizlett of Bethany is one of approximately 2,200 college students and recent graduates selected to participate in the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program.
She departs at the end of August for Jordan, a country she first visited in 2017 as a WVU student and Boren Scholar, where she’ll embark on an international filmmaking journey documenting end-of-life rituals and aging in the country.
“I have spent so much time studying Arabic, specifically Jordanian Arabic, so I knew that I wanted to go back to Jordan,” she said. “I also wanted to combine these language skills and the documentary filmmaking skills that I developed post college into one project.”
Growing up, Haizlett dreamed of traveling the world as much as possible and opted to enroll at WVU for its international studies program and available education abroad resources.
“Freshman year, I came in with the idea that I was going to take advantage of all the resources that this University offers to study abroad because it’s pretty incredible,” she said.
During her WVU career, Haizlett also studied abroad in Mexico, Bahrain, and secured a Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Tangier, Morocco.
“I spent half of my time at WVU traveling and studying abroad,” she said.
Overwhelmed with gratitude for her experiences abroad, Haizlett was eager to share her story — and those of the people she met abroad — with others.
“I created a podcast for my senior thesis that focused on my study abroad experiences as well as the connections between the Arab world and Appalachia,” she said. “It highlighted those more human elements of how we relate to people who seem so different from us.”
“Sandstone,” the 12-episode series, featured interviews with residents of West Virginia and the Middle East who shared parallel stories of life, love and religion.
The experience of producing “Sandstone” was so profound that Haizlett decided to pursue storytelling as a career, specifically in the medium of film.
Using her experiences abroad and in documentary filmmaking, the 2019 graduate with dual degrees in international studies and Spanish will spend the next nine months becoming reacquainted with Jordanian culture and rituals.
“My hope in Jordan is to kind of dive deep into how Americans might reevaluate our approach to aging and end of life in order to care for elders and ourselves in a more ethical, more fulfilling way,” she said. “I think, for a variety of reasons, a lot of Americans feel disconnected to traditions related to death and how to care for elders.”
Haizlett said she’s always been drawn to older adults and the topic of aging, especially after struggling with the lack of ritual while watching her grandmothers age and die in the Mountain State.
“There are extensive traditions related to death and dying in Appalachia, but at this point those practices have largely been displaced by modernization and medicalization,” Haizlett said. “My hope with this project is to provide a cross-cultural experience for audiences and inspire viewers to reconnect with their own cultural practices, wherever they may come from.”
Ideally, she would like to see this turn into a multipart project that’s a comparative cross-cultural study on aging and end of life in film format.
“I’m really excited to go back to Jordan, especially with a purpose in mind, a purpose that I feel very passionate about,” she said. “To have this affiliation with Fulbright and just the opportunity to pursue this project, I’m really excited about that.”
WVU students receive support from the ASPIRE Office as they compete for nationally competitive awards like the Fulbright scholarship.
