You’ve revised your draft. You know who your readers are supposed to be. You’ve made the instability visible (you think). The costs are clear (you hope).
Now test it.
But not with someone sympathetic. Not with a friend who studies the same thing you do. Not with someone who already cares about your topic.
Give it to someone who will hate it.
Someone who thinks your field is irrelevant. Someone who doesn’t care about Berlin or the Middle East or whatever tension you’re writing about. Someone who has no reason to keep reading past the first paragraph.
Ask them: “Where did you stop caring? What sentence made you think ‘so what?'”
Their answer is a truth. Not a truth about whether your work is good. A truth about whether your instability actually creates costs for readers who don’t already care.
Because here’s the thing: the readers who already care will read your work no matter what. They’re not the test.
The test is the reader who has no reason to care. Can you make them care anyway?
That’s what costs and benefits are for.
Find that reader. Give them your draft. Listen to where they stop.
This session marked the first draft sharing for the course. Rather than traditional feedback, we focused on the gap between what writers think they’re communicating and what readers actually receive—particularly around instability, costs, and readers.
Opening Discussion: What Do You Want When You Share Writing? (10:15-10:40)
We began by asking students to reflect on what they actually want when they share unfinished writing.
Responses included:
“Tell me if it makes sense”
“Tell me what’s missing”
“Tell me it’s good”
“Tell me whether to keep going”
“Find the problems”
“Understand what I was trying to say”
“Tell me if anyone would care about this”
The key insight: These are completely different—and often incompatible—asks.
Some requests assume the idea is right and just needs clarity (“tell me if it makes sense”). Others question whether the whole project is worth doing (“tell me if anyone would care”). Some ask readers to decode the writer’s intentions (“understand what I was trying to say”) while others ask readers to challenge the work (“find the problems”).
The tension: Most writers want readers to validate what they’re trying to do while also telling them what’s wrong. But you can’t have both simultaneously.
The discussion surfaced:
Feedback that serves writer anxiety vs. feedback that serves the writing
Feedback about what you meant vs. what readers received
Feedback that assumes your frame is right vs. questions the frame
The reframe for draft sharing:
Readers should NOT try to understand what the writer meant. Instead, readers report what they actually received.
Not “I think you’re trying to say X”—but “Here’s what I understood.”
Not “This is good/needs work”—but “Here’s where I saw instability” and “Here’s where I didn’t see why I should care.”
The writer’s job: Listen to the gap between intention and reception.
Pair Reading: Mark What You Receive (10:40-11:20)
Students paired up with someone whose topic was different from theirs.
Phase 1: Silent Reading (20 minutes total, 10 per draft)
One person reads the other’s draft in silence, marking three things:
✓ Where you see the instability (what doesn’t fit, what contradicts)
$ Where you see costs/benefits (why this matters to readers, not to the writer)
? Where you can identify who the readers are (who cares about this?)
If the reader reaches the end without marking all three, that’s important information.
Phase 2: Report What You Received (20 minutes total, 10 per draft)
The reader reports back—but with strict constraints: Only report what you marked. Don’t interpret. Don’t suggest fixes.
Examples:
“I saw instability here where you said X contradicted Y”
“I didn’t see costs until page 3, and even then I wasn’t sure if they were costs to me or to you”
“I couldn’t tell who I was supposed to be as a reader”
The writer’s job: Listen. Don’t explain. Don’t defend. Just hear the gap.
This phase made visible the often-significant distance between what writers thought they communicated (instability, costs, specific readers) and what readers actually received (confusion, vagueness, unclear stakes).
Small Group Pressure Test (11:20-11:40)
Groups of 3-4 (mixed topics) took turns reading their openings aloud (first 1-2 pages).
The group’s role: Be the skeptical reader. Push on everything.
Questions:
“Where’s the instability? I don’t see what doesn’t fit.”
“So what? Why does that matter to me as a reader?”
“Who am I supposed to be? What community cares about this?”
“Is this a gap (we don’t know X) or a problem (not knowing X costs us Y)?”
“At what sentence would I stop reading? Why?”
This phase pushed beyond politeness. Students practiced being honest readers—the kind who are busy, skeptical, and will stop reading if they don’t immediately see value.
What emerged:
Many drafts described interesting observations but didn’t establish instability
Costs were often implied rather than explicit
Readers were frequently unnamed or too generic (“people interested in Berlin”)
The gap problem vs. the gap itself remained unclear in many drafts
Assignment for December 3
You’ve now tested your draft with multiple readers. You know where the gaps are—between what you thought you were communicating and what readers actually received.
Revise your 3-4 pages based on what you learned today.
Your goal:
Make the instability visible in the first two paragraphs
Show costs that readers bear (not you)
Make clear who your readers are (even if implicitly)
The test: Between now and next session, give your revised draft to someone outside this class—a friend, a colleague, anyone. Ask them: “Where would you stop reading and why?”
If they stop before they see the instability and why it matters, keep revising.
Bring the revised draft printed on December 3. We’ll go deeper into how instabilities actually work and how to construct them effectively.
Key Takeaways
Intention ≠ Reception: What you think you’re communicating and what readers receive are often very different.
The gap is the learning: The distance between what you meant and what readers understood shows you what needs work.
Readers report, don’t interpret: The most useful feedback describes what was received, not what the writer “really meant.”
Instability must be unmissable: If readers have to work to find your tension, it’s not clear enough.
Costs must be explicit: Implied stakes don’t work. Readers need to know specifically what they lose if this stays unresolved.
Generic readers = no readers: “People interested in X” isn’t specific enough. Name the actual community.
Skeptical readers are generous readers: Honest pushback helps more than polite validation.
Today’s session focused on a crucial shift in thinking about academic writing: moving from explaining what we know to creating problems that readers care about solving.
Opening Discussion: What IS the Function of Academic Writing?
We began by asking students what they think the function of academic writing is. The whiteboard captured a rich range of responses:
Students suggested academic writing functions:
To think
To express clearly
To present “objective” research
To prove/select ideas
To share new info/data
To open perspectives
To convince people
To add to conversation
To archive (what is wanted to be known)
For career/prestige/credibility
To show expertise
As control (of people)
To make money
To fill gaps
To entertain?
Bigger questions that emerged:
Is academia isolated from society?
What does academic writing matter to?
Individuals?
Institutions?
“The field”?
Why write at all?
Key tension identified: The difference between:
Writer’s purpose: to think about something (uses text as thinking tool)
Reader’s purpose: to learn about/understand something (uses text as learning tool)
This gave way to the core insight from Larry McEnerny’s writing programme at the University of Chicago: The function of academic writing is to help readers understand better something they want to understand well.
That’s only one way to look at it, of course 😉
Here’s a session with Larry McEnerny; you’ll see I cite him alot:
Key Examples Analysed
Example 1: The Clonal/Sexual Co-existence Problem
We looked at two versions of the same academic opening to see which created more value:
Version 1a (flat?):
As a consequence of the “cost of sex,” the theoretical probability of clonal and sexual co-existence is low; observation of co-existence in vertebrate taxa has been reported. Within the frozen niche-variation (FNV) model, the relevant parameter is difference in overall niche breadth. A wider niche breadth for the sexuals than for the clones is predicted in performance in monocultures; performances in mixtures do not indicate such a relationship. Switching of behaviors or resource-use patterns between mixed and pure cultures may be the cause. The proposed study will examine this prediction of the FNV model.
Version 1b (creates problem?):
As a consequence of the “cost of sex,” the theoretical probability of clonal and sexual co-existence is low. Nonetheless, observation of co-existence in vertebrate taxa has been widely reported. Within the accepted model of frozen niche-variation (FNV), co-existence is explained by difference in overall niche breadth. However, although the FNV model correctly predicts wider niche breadth for the sexuals than for the clones, its predictions are inconsistent with reported performances in mixtures. The proposed study will examine whether the anomaly may be explained by the switching of behaviors or resource-use patterns between mixed and pure cultures.
Creates tension between what we expect and what we observe
Shows that current models don’t fully explain the phenomenon
Example 2: William Sewell on Historical Events
We didn’t analyse this one during the session, but I think it’s a brilliant example of how to create a problem that looks like background but actually destabilises existing knowledge:
Ever since Herodotus, historians have written about events. Battles, alliances, scandals, conquests, conspiracies, revolts, royal successions, reforms, elections, religious revivals, assassinations, discoveries: momentous events have always been the bread and butter of narrative history. But despite the prominence of events in historical narratives, the event has rarely been scrutinized as a theoretical category. Traditional narrative historians who reveled in the contingency and particularity of events generally refused on principles to engage in explicit theorizing. Meanwhile, historical sociologists, along with the minority of historians who turned to the social sciences in order to escape the hegemony of political narrative, generally disdained the study of mere events and sought instead to discover general causal patterns underlying historical change. This was true of the “Annales school” in France from the late 1920s forward and of the ‘new social history” that blossomed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s the old antagonisms between narrative history and historical sociology had begun to fade; yet theoretical work on historical events has remained relatively rare…
What’s happening here:
Looks like historical background
But actually creates instability: “despite the prominence… rarely scrutinized”
Shows cost: historians can’t adequately theorize major turning points
Identifies specific readers: historical sociologists
Example 3: The Erasmus Chronology Problem
It is a perennial paradox of Erasmus studies that neither the wealth of autobiographical information that the Dutch humanist has left us nor the enormous mass of scholarly literature that has grown up around his life and works has ever given us a firm grip on the year of his birth and the chronology of his youth. We do not know with certainty, for example, how old Erasmus was when he entered Steyn monastery…
Key move: The instability is already recognised by the community (“perennial paradox”), so the writer just reminds readers of it.
Example 4: Caribbean Foreign Policy
What is missing [in the study of the international relations of the Caribbean] are the same things that are missing in the study of Third World or Latin American foreign policy and international relations as a whole: Most of what is written is country-specific or issue-specific rather than general and comprehensive; most is descriptive rather than theoretical. The challenge is to put together what we know into a plausible whole, within a suitable theoretical framework, as a first step in developing theory…
But readers may well ask: Why is it important to… to study Third World policy with some rigor… Is it of any great significance…? Apart from the obvious value of supplying knowledge to those who want it, the study of Third World foreign policy should assist in the building and refining of international relations “middle-range” theory. The sub-field of international relations that is most clearly linked to such study is that of comparative foreign policy… Also of relevance is the field of decision-making…the realm of process…
What’s happening:
Identifies gap/instability
Anticipates reader skepticism: “But readers may well ask…”
Has to work harder to show costs/benefits because it’s a gap problem
Names specific theoretical benefits to specific sub-fields
Example 5: The Book of Amos – De-stabilizing Stasis
In recent years several attempts have been made to discover an overall structural pattern in the book of Amos. Certainly inspired by the burgeoning interest in “literary approaches” to the Bible, these studies have divided Amos into a relatively small number of extended sections, each of which (it is claimed) has a high degree of literary integrity. A comparison of these studies, however, soon reveals considerable diversity among them. Thus, to look no further than the authors mentioned in footnote 1, the following divergent analyses of chaps. 3-6 have been proposed:
The only points these scholars are all agreed on are that 5:1 begins a new section (although I shall argue below that in fact it does not) and that 6:14 closes a section (which has long been recognized by all commentators).
The main reason for this diversity, in my view, is that insufficient attention has been given to the criteria for making such analyses. In particular: (i) Formal criteria, such as introductory and closing formulas, have been given much greater prominence than they merit. (ii) Literary criteria, such as palistrophic structuring and inclusos, have often been employed too loosely and impressionistically.
In the present article, I shall offer a new analysis which, through giving particular attention to thematic considerations, will argue that Amos consists of a…
What’s happening here:
Sets up what looks like stable knowledge: “several attempts have been made”
Then de-stabilises it: “however, soon reveals considerable diversity”
Shows the cost: scholars can’t agree because their methods are flawed
This is a stasis → de-stabilising move rather than just pointing to an existing instability
The Three Components of a Problem
1. INSTABILITY
Something doesn’t fit
Something contradicts something else
Something is inconsistent
Signal words: however, although, nonetheless, but, paradox, anomaly, inconsistent, reported, widely accepted
2. COSTS/BENEFITS (to readers)
What can’t we understand if we leave this unstable?
What would we gain by resolving it?
NOT “I won’t finish my degree”
NOT “I find this interesting”
But: “This prevents us from understanding X that the community cares about”
3. READERS
Specific communities
Who cares about this?
Whose understanding needs to be better?
Gap vs. Problem: The Crucial Difference
Gap thinking: “No one has written about Syrian grocery stores in Neukölln.” → SO WHAT? There are infinite things we haven’t written about.
Problem thinking: “We think we understand how diaspora communities maintain identity through food practices, but the Syrian groceries in Neukölln challenge this model because…” → NOW you’re showing that the gap has consequences for something readers care about.
Gap = “here’s something we don’t know”Problem = “here’s why not knowing hurts our understanding of something we care about”
Work to Do During the Next Week (November 6-18)
Since we won’t meet next week, use this time for two activities:
Activity 1: Find the Problem Language
Take 2-3 published articles related to your field or topic. Read just the introductions and:
Circle the instability words: however, although, nonetheless, inconsistent, paradox, anomaly, reported, widely accepted
Locate where costs/benefits are articulated
Identify who the readers are
Notice the patterns. What language does your field use to create problems?
Also notice that maybe many academic papers do not use problem language at all – and maybe that’s a problem 😉
Activity 2: Test Your Own Tension
Write responses to these three questions about your Berlin tension:
Instability: What exactly doesn’t fit in your tension? (Use instability language: however, although, but…)
Costs: What can’t we understand if we leave this unresolved? (What intellectual cost does the COMMUNITY bear – not you personally?)
Readers: Who are three specific people/groups who would care about resolving this tension? Why would they care?
If possible, share your answers with a fellow students and test whether your costs actually land with readers. Does someone else see why this matters?
A note: You might discover as you do this that the topic you want to write about is actually more about what you’re interested in, or what you want to use to demonstrate your knowledge, qualifications, or expertise. That’s completely okay. That’s how most of us have been trained in academia, and we can do this well.
But in this course, I’m asking you to try something different: to experiment with reader-centered writing. To see what happens when you start from what readers need to understand rather than what you want to show them you know. It’s a different muscle, and it takes practice. This course is the space to try it.
Then: Write your 3-4 page draft (see full assignment details above)
Assignment for November 19th
Write a 3-4 page draft
NOT necessarily the beginning of your paper. Instead:
Pick one moment from your walking where your tension became visible. A specific place, observation, encounter, reading, source etc. that made the tension real.
Write 3-4 pages describing that moment and exploring what made it a problem of understanding – not just something you noticed, but something that created instability in how we think we understand Berlin or/and the Middle East // the Middle East in Berlin.
As you write, keep asking:
What doesn’t fit here?
Why should readers care that it doesn’t fit?
What can’t we understand properly if we leave this tension unresolved?
Don’t worry about:
Perfect structure
Citations yet
Whether this is “academic enough”
Starting at the beginning
DO worry about:
Making the instability visible
Showing why it matters
Writing toward specific readers (even if you’re not sure who they are yet)
Bring this draft in a format that you can share with fellow students on November 19th.
Looking Ahead to November 19th
Next session focus: Who are you writing for, and can they see why this matters?
We’ll work in pairs or groups or alone to:
Identify who your specific readers are
Test whether your instability creates costs they actually care about
Practice addressing instabilities that help readers understand something better
The question we’ll be asking: Does your writing fulfill its function of helping specific readers understand better something they want to understand well?
Key Takeaways
Function over form: Academic writing’s job is to help readers understand better, not to explain what you know.
Problems, not gaps: Don’t just identify what we don’t know. Show why not knowing matters.
Instability language matters: Words like “however,” “although,” “inconsistent” signal to readers that there’s a problem worth solving.
Costs must be to readers, not writers: “I need to graduate” is not a reason for readers to care. “We can’t adequately theorise X” might be.
Background creates stability, problems need instability: Don’t start with what we all agree on. Start with what doesn’t work.
Yesterday, I watched a colleague explain a simple concept to students for twenty-seven minutes. The idea itself could have been grasped in three. But academia has trained us to believe that understanding requires exhaustion, that clarity emerges only after we have suffocated every possible ambiguity. We have become cartographers of the obvious, mapping territories that were never meant to be fully charted. The email that follows our lecture contains seventeen bullet points summarizing what was already over-explained. The footnote references twelve sources for a claim that stands perfectly well on its own legs. We have mistaken thoroughness for rigor, and in doing so, we have forgotten that some truths reveal themselves only in the spaces we leave unfilled.
Consider the difference between a museum label and a poem. The label tells you everything: artist, date, medium, historical context, artistic movement, thematic concerns. It is complete, accurate, academically sound. It is also dead. The poem trusts you to feel before you understand, to wonder before you conclude. It assumes you possess intelligence rather than demanding you prove it. Academic writing has become a collection of museum labels, each desperately attempting to anticipate every possible question, to close every interpretive gap. We write as if ambiguity were a disease and our footnotes the cure. But what if the gap is not a flaw to be fixed but a space for thought to breathe? What if the most profound understanding happens not when everything is explained, but when just enough remains unsaid?
The modern academic paper reads like an insurance document written by someone who fears lawsuits from future readers. Every claim must be hedged, every interpretation must acknowledge its alternatives, every statement must genuflect before the altar of “existing scholarship.” We have created a prose style that sounds like it was written by a committee of anxious bureaucrats, each terrified that someone might accuse them of saying something original. The result is writing that explains everything except why anyone should care. It is scholarship that has sacrificed insight for coverage, depth for breadth, poetry for policy. When did we decide that intellectual courage meant citing thirty sources rather than trusting one good idea?
This compulsion toward completeness reveals something deeper about our contemporary anxiety with uncertainty. We live in an age that has pathologized the unknown, where every Google search promises definitive answers and every podcast claims to unlock the secrets of success, happiness, creativity, productivity. Academic writing has absorbed this cultural terror of ambiguity. We write as if our readers were children who might choke on an unexplained concept, as if leaving anything unsaid were a form of intellectual negligence. But consider how much more engaging conversation becomes when someone trusts you enough to leave a thought unfinished. The pause that follows “I’ve been thinking about…” contains more possibilities than any complete sentence ever could.
The concept of negative space comes from visual art, where the empty areas around and between objects create meaning as powerfully as the objects themselves. A drawing gains its power not just from what is included but from what is deliberately omitted. The white space around a figure can suggest movement, emotion, tension in ways that additional lines never could. Academic writing has forgotten this fundamental principle of composition. We fill every conceptual space with explanation, leaving no room for readers to participate in the creation of meaning. We write as if silence were failure rather than invitation.
Beginning tomorrow, I will attempt something that feels simultaneously natural and revolutionary: writing that trusts its readers. For forty-two working days, I will publish short essays that deliberately leave space for thought. Not because I am lazy or unclear, but because I believe thinking is a collaborative act. Each piece will resist the academic compulsion to explain everything, to qualify every statement, to cite every influence. Instead, they will offer ideas the way good teachers offer questions: with confidence that the reader possesses sufficient intelligence to engage, develop, and occasionally disagree.
This experiment emerges from a conviction that our current academic writing style does not serve thought but suffocates it. We have created a prose equivalent of a helicopter parent, hovering anxiously over every concept to ensure no misunderstanding occurs. But misunderstanding is not the enemy of learning; it is often its beginning. The reader who must work to complete a thought becomes a co-creator of its meaning. The essay that leaves strategic gaps invites genuine intellectual partnership rather than passive consumption.
These forty-two pieces will explore what happens when we grant our readers the dignity of uncertainty. They will be deliberately incomplete, intentionally open-ended, purposefully unfinished. Some will frustrate readers who have been trained to expect answers. Others might inspire thoughts that exceed anything I could have planned. The real experiment is not whether I can write differently, but whether we can collectively remember how to think together across the spaces between words.
The number forty-two carries its own gentle mockery of academic pretension. It suggests both commitment and playfulness, seriousness and irony. These essays will take thinking seriously enough to leave room for surprise. They will trust you enough to let some sentences end where they naturally want to end, rather than where scholarly convention demands they continue. In a culture drowning in explanation, they will dare to offer experience instead.
What emerges in the silence after a question? What thoughts grow in the gaps between arguments? What understanding develops when we stop explaining and start trusting? For the next forty-two days, we will find out together. The experiment begins with this admission: I do not know what will happen. And that uncertainty, rather than being a problem to solve, might be exactly the space where genuine thinking finally has room to breathe.
Last week, teaching writing to graduate students, I watched a familiar scene unfold. We were discussing how to write for specific readers – scholars in their field, policy makers, community organizations. The usual confusion spread across their faces, then one student raised their hand: “But I thought good academic writing was about being objective and comprehensive? About showing we understand the material?”
This moment haunts me because it reveals something profound about how we teach writing in higher education – or rather, how we fail to teach it. For years, we train students in a peculiar form of intellectual performance. Write an introduction with background information. Define your terms. State your methodology. Demonstrate thorough knowledge of the literature. Follow proper citation formats. Use appropriate technical language. It’s a carefully choreographed dance, performed for an audience of one: the professor who already knows everything you’re writing about and is literally paid to read and evaluate your stuff.
Then suddenly, in graduate school or professional academia, we expect these same students to write for real readers – people who might actually need their insights, who have specific problems to solve, who are looking for new understanding, and – most importantly – who choose to read a text. The transition is jarring. All those carefully learned habits of “good academic writing” suddenly become barriers to effective communication.
Think about what we’re really teaching when we tell students to “start with background information.” We’re teaching them to assume readers know nothing – when in reality, readers – and academics even more so – are experts hungry for new insights. When we insist they “define their terms,” we’re teaching them to prioritize comprehensiveness over engagement – when actual readers want to know why they should care before they invest in definitions.
The deeper irony? Many of us know this. We know that our own reading habits are ruthlessly selective. We skim for relevance, hunting for insights that matter to our work. We abandon articles that don’t quickly show their value. We get frustrated with writing that buries its significance under layers of ritual academic performance. Yet when it comes to teaching writing, we perpetuate the very practices we find frustrating as readers.
Perhaps most troubling is how this approach shapes “academic” – or let’s simply call it complex – thinking itself. When you’re not writing for real readers with real needs, it’s easy to lose sight of why your work matters. Research becomes about filling gaps rather than solving problems. Arguments become about being right rather than being useful. The whole enterprise of academic writing starts to feel like an elaborate game of intellectual performance rather than a vital exchange of ideas that could make a difference in the world.
I see this in my students’ faces when we finally discuss real readers. There’s fear – because writing for actual people feels more exposed than writing for a generic “academic audience.” But there’s also relief and excitement. Suddenly, writing has a purpose beyond earning a grade or proving competence. It becomes about serving readers who need what you know.
This shifts everything. When students start asking “Who needs this knowledge and why?”, their writing transforms. They make bolder claims because they understand what’s at stake. They embrace clarity because they want to be useful. They stop hiding behind passive voice and vague generalizations because they’re no longer writing for no one in particular.
Maybe it’s time to radically rethink how we teach writing in higher education. Instead of starting with rules and formats, what if we started with readers? What if our first questions weren’t about proper academic form and showing off knowledge but about who needs this knowledge and why? What if we taught writing not as a performance of expertise but as an act of intellectual service?
As I write this, I’m acutely aware that I’m performing the very balancing act I’m critiquing – trying to speak simultaneously to scholars who might bristle at this challenge to academic conventions and to students and teachers who might recognize their own struggles in these words. But perhaps this tension itself points to something essential: the most valuable academic writing has always been about building bridges rather than towers. Our task isn’t to perfect an isolated form of professional communication, but to find ways to make complex ideas matter to the people who need them. The question isn’t whether to follow or break academic conventions – it’s whether our writing serves real readers with real needs. Everything else is just ritual.