Career Development Grant

Part memoir, part literary criticism, my project traces the impact of contemporary warfare on the reading and interpreting of literary texts and other visual artifacts, such as film. The collection focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, in which I served previously as a foreign volunteer in the Israeli army and as a human rights advocate. The essays explore my own growth as a soldier and writer and try to come to terms with some of the horrors I witnessed in that locale, as well as their subsequent impact on my outlook as a critic. Overall, these essays try to balance personal reflection with an outward look at art and explore how the experience of the modern-day battlefield transposes itself onto literary interpretation. In terms of goals, I hope to use the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council funds to conduct research in Israel and then draft my volume's two remaining essays, which I will then submit to literary journals for publication and share at a public reading at the University of Minnesota Duluth. I aim to write two remaining essays on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The first is a follow-up to the essay In Josaphat's Valley," which I published in Harpur Palate and which forms the titular essay of my collection. The proposed essay will detail how the Israeli military base in Bethlehem, where I served previously, has changed in the last ten years and since the time that my original article was published. Specifically, this new essay will trace the impact of the occupation on the soldiers and explore what hopes, if any, they have for the future. The second, proposed essay is also a follow-up piece, in this case to an essay called "Rights of Return," which is currently under review at literary journals. This second, proposed essay will explore how the Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem, where I previously lived, has changed in the fifteen years since I left. The piece will also explore how the refugees perceive the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and will articulate what hopes, if any, they have for the future. The success of these two essays will depend on the quality of the research and writing that comes out of these two projects. Although I have published several-dozen creative works in literary journals over the years, I do not generally consider publication to be the sole measure of a project's success, as some creative writing pieces can take many years to develop. I do, however, aim to produce two publishable pieces and to share them at a community reading."