Arts and identity: Making Israel and Palestine real through the voices of artists and arts organizations

Betsey Coleman traveled all over Israel and the Palestinian territories as part of a Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching Program for four months in the spring of 2012. There, she explored how arts improve learning, foster community projects, and enhance economic development. The result was a website: Arts and Identity which makes an enormous variety of innovative resources- film, photographs and text- available for students, teachers, and anyone interested in experiencing and interacting with Israeli and Palestinian culture in new and very engaging ways. Whether talking to graffiti artists in South Tel Aviv, video artists in Haifa, parkour boys in Qalqilya or circus performers in Nablus, Coleman’s portraits of people engaged in expressing their diverse identities through the arts promote greater cross-cultural understanding crucial for helping to dispel stereotypes . In her presentation, she will describe the Palestinian and Israeli artists she met who shared candid and vivid stories about ever-changing cultural worlds, evolving identities and common dreams of peace, normalcy, and prosperity. This is a revealing journey which explores a facet of Palestinian and Israeli identity rarely treated in mainstream media.Betsey Coleman teaches English, is the Upper School English Chair, and Coordinator of the Curious Theatre Playwriting Institute at Colorado Academy in Denver where she is also Master Teacher. She has a BA from Pitzer College and an MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. Betsey has been awarded scholarships from the English Speaking Union, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Facing History and Ourselves, and the Fulbright Program. In 2011 she received a grant from the State Department’s Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (TEA) and taught at Takeo Regional Teacher’s College in Cambodia. As a Fulbright grantee for the Distinguished Award in Teaching, Betsey studied at Hebrew University and completed an action research project: “Teaching Palestinian and Israeli Identity through the Arts” in Israel and Palestine for four months in 2012. Betsey serves on the boards of The Curious Theatre and the Middle East Outreach Council.BETSEY COLEMANENGLISH CHAIR, MASTER TEACHER, AND COORDINATOR OF THE CURIOUS THEATRE PLAYWRITING INSTITUTECOLORADO ACADEMY, DENVER, COMENAS Colloquium Series, Spring 2013Friday, January 25, 20133pm in Marshall 490Click to return to main Colloquium pageWatch video of talk