Clara Haizlett

MORGANTOWN — A Bethany native and graduate of West Virginia University is among more than 2,000 individuals selected to participate in the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, considered the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program.

Clara Haizlett has “a passion for storytelling and exploring cultural similarities between Appalachia and the Arab world,” according to information released by WVU. As part of the program, Haizlett will be traveling to Jordan at the end of the month as part of an international filmmaking project to document aging and end-of-life rituals 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.”

Haizlett previously visited Jordan in 2017 through the Boren Scholarship program.

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, adding she was eager to share her experiences, and the stories of those she has met along the way. “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. 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.

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.”

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.”