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Writing, The Loneliness of Academic Writing: Why Do We Pretend Readers Don’t Matter?

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.

Writing, three versions of an introduction

A

Over the last sixty years, Turkish immigration to Germany has been a significant phenomenon that has shaped both countries in numerous ways. This paper will examine how Turkish immigrants in Berlin are perceived through food culture, particularly döner kebab. The research question is: How do Middle Easterners in Germany shape perceptions about themselves and other Middle Easterners, and how do these self-perceptions influence the views of non-Middle Eastern Germans? To answer this question, it is first important to understand the historical background of Turkish migration to Germany.

Turkish migration to Germany began with the Labor Recruitment Agreement of 1961, which brought many guest workers to Germany. Initially intended as a temporary measure, this migration became permanent as workers settled and brought their families. Through this process, Turkish immigrants established businesses, including food establishments, which became an important part of German urban culture. The döner kebab, in particular, has become a symbol of Turkish presence in Germany.

This paper will argue that the reduction of Turkish identity to culinary contributions reveals ongoing issues with integration and recognition in German society. The methodology will involve analysis of personal experiences, historical documents, and contemporary social discourse. This research contributes to the growing body of literature on immigrant identity and cultural integration in Europe.


B

Despite extensive scholarship on Turkish immigration in Germany, our understanding of how cultural recognition operates in everyday urban spaces remains fundamentally flawed. The widely accepted framework that equates visibility with integration has obscured a more troubling phenomenon: the way seemingly positive acknowledgments of Turkish contributions to German society actually reinforce patterns of exclusion. This oversight has significant consequences for both migration theory and integration policy. While scholars have documented the economic impact of Turkish labor migration (Author Year), they have failed to recognize how celebratory discourses about Turkish food culture—particularly in Berlin—paradoxically serve to legitimize deeper forms of structural marginalization. This analytical gap is especially concerning given mounting evidence that cultural recognition policies across Western Europe consistently mistake surface visibility for meaningful inclusion. By examining how Turkish immigrants in Berlin navigate and contest these contradictory forms of recognition, this study challenges dominant theoretical assumptions about cultural integration that continue to shape both academic discourse and policy decisions. The stakes of this theoretical intervention extend beyond migration studies, offering crucial insights for scholars grappling with questions of recognition, urban belonging, and the persistent legacies of guest worker programs in contemporary Europe.


C

Media coverage of Turkish immigrant success stories in Germany continues to miss a crucial and troubling pattern: the more we celebrate döner kebab as a symbol of multicultural Berlin, the more we inadvertently reinforce harmful stereotypes about Turkish immigrants. While food journalists and cultural commentators have extensively covered Berlin’s vibrant Turkish food scene, this feel-good narrative obscures a concerning reality that threatens to undermine authentic reporting on immigrant communities. The widely-circulated story of döner kebab as proof of successful integration not only misrepresents the complex experiences of Turkish-Germans but actively hampers journalists’ ability to accurately portray contemporary urban dynamics. This investigation reveals how seemingly positive coverage can perpetuate outdated tropes, offering media professionals new frameworks for reporting on immigrant communities that avoid these common pitfalls. At stake is not just the accuracy of cultural journalism, but our ability to meaningfully convey how urban communities actually negotiate identity and belonging in contemporary Germany.

Writing, The Hidden Fear in Academic Writing: Why We Can’t Stop Showing Off

There’s something peculiar about the way academics approach writing that nobody likes to discuss: We’re terrified of getting straight to the point. This isn’t about writer’s block or imposter syndrome – those topics have been analyzed to death. No, this is about a deeper psychological pattern I noticed while teaching academic writing: We treat every piece of writing as if it were a defense against invisible critics.

Watch any academic write and you’ll see this defensive behavior in action. Before making even the smallest claim, they’ll build elaborate fortifications of citations. Before presenting their actual insight, they’ll construct vast moats of literature review. It’s as if there’s an imaginary committee standing over their shoulder, ready to pounce on any undefended statement. “But what about this 1973 paper?” the phantom critic whispers. “Haven’t you read the German scholarship?” another ghost mutters disapprovingly.

This defensive posture creates a bizarre paradox. The more expertise we gain, the more we feel compelled to demonstrate that expertise before getting to our point. It’s like we’re stuck in an endless job interview, constantly proving our qualifications to an invisible hiring committee. As one senior professor confided, “I know more than I did twenty years ago, but I feel less confident making direct statements without first showing all my work.”

It’s like writing from fear rather than purpose. The irony is that this defensive writing actually undermines our credibility rather than protecting it. When we lead with elaborate displays of knowledge, we signal insecurity rather than authority. It’s like starting every conversation by listing our degrees and publications – technically impressive, but deeply uncomfortable for everyone involved.

What makes this pattern so resistant to change? Partly, it’s because academia rewards this behavior in subtle ways. Papers that display comprehensive knowledge tend to be seen as “thorough” while direct arguments can be dismissed as “superficial.” But there’s also something more personal at work. Many academics were the smart kids in school, the ones who gained approval through displaying knowledge. We’ve internalized the idea that our value lies in showing what we know rather than in contributing to understanding.

The solution isn’t to abandon scholarly rigor or stop citing relevant work. It’s to recognize that our defensive writing habits come from fear rather than necessity. Our readers aren’t looking for proof of our credentials – they’re looking for contributions to their understanding. They don’t need us to prove we belong in the conversation. They need us to advance the conversation.

Maybe it’s time to write as if we belong, rather than as if we’re constantly applying for membership in the academic club.

Writing, The Art of First Paragraphs: What We Learn When Students Review Each Other’s Writing

Today, I ran a peer review session for “Writing the Middle East for Your Daily Read.” The setup was simple: Students exchanged their papers and read just the first few paragraphs. What emerged was a fascinating pattern that writing teachers see constantly but students rarely notice until it’s pointed out.

Most academic papers start with what I call the “knowledge display dance” – a carefully choreographed sequence where writers demonstrate everything they’ve learned before getting to their actual point. It’s perfectly understandable: After weeks of research, we want to show we’ve done our homework. We lead with broad historical backgrounds, throw in a few scholarly references, maybe add some definitions. One student captured it perfectly: “I feel like I need to prove I know what I’m talking about before I can talk about it.” The problem? Readers don’t particularly care what we know. They care about what they might learn that matters to them.

This disconnect became obvious during our review session. When asked what the papers were trying to communicate, readers could identify topics but struggled to articulate why these topics mattered. “It’s about exhibitions of the Middle East in Berlin” one student said, “but I’m not sure why I should care about this.” Another noted, “There’s clearly deep research here, but I had to read three paragraphs before I understood why this research might be important.” This pattern showed up in nearly every paper: Writers leading with their knowledge rather than their contribution.

This happens a lot in academic writing how we usually teach it or require it in university settings. Students learn to write by showing teachers they’ve understood the material. This works perfectly well in school, where the reader (the teacher) is paid to care about your display of knowledge. But academic writing serves a different function – it helps readers understand something better that they already want to understand well. The shift from showing knowledge to serving readers is one of the hardest transitions for academic writers to make.

The review session revealed another common pattern: the “safety blanket introduction.” Writers tend to open with broad, historically sweeping or general statements that feel safe and inarguable. “Trade has been central to human civilization since ancient times.” “Scholars have long debated the role of women in medieval Islamic societies.” These openings feel scholarly, but they actually distance readers from what makes the work interesting. When we asked students in previous semesters to identify what made them want to keep reading, not a single person mentioned these broad openings. Instead, they pointed to moments where papers surfaced specific tensions or challenges in our understanding.

What makes this pattern so persistent? Partly, it’s habit – we write what we’ve read. But there’s also an element of academic imposter syndrome at work. Starting with broad knowledge displays and historical sweeps feels safer than leading with our specific intervention. It’s easier to hide behind other scholars’ work than to stand behind our own contribution.

The good news is that awareness of these patterns is the first step to breaking them. Once students could see how their writing reflected these unconscious habits, they began to imagine different approaches. “What if I started with the problem my research addresses?” one student suggested. “Maybe I could open with the specific question that drove my research,” said another, or “Maybe I could use a personal story.” These insights didn’t come from me lecturing about writing techniques – they emerged naturally from students seeing their work through others’ eyes.

The next challenge will be helping students move from awareness to action. But that’s a topic for another post.

Explorations, Beyond Location: Rethinking Cultural Heritage in an Age of Global Flows

When Nefertiti gazes out from her vitrine in Berlin’s Neues Museum, where exactly is she looking? To Egypt, her place of origin? To the thousands of tourists snapping photos? Or perhaps to a future where questions of cultural heritage transcend our obsession with fixed locations? Her presence in Berlin has sparked decades of controversy, yet the very terms of this debate might be outdated in our era of global cultural flows.

For decades, debates about cultural heritage have been stuck in a geographical tug-of-war. Should the Parthenon Marbles return to Athens? Must Nefertiti go back to Cairo? These questions assume that cultural objects belong in specific places – that somewhere, somehow, there’s a “right” location that would resolve complex historical entanglements. This thinking reflects a certain “fetishism of place” – our tendency to bind cultural meaning to fixed geographical locations, even as global flows of people, media, and ideas increasingly challenge such static notions.

Consider Berlin’s Şehitlik Mosque. Is it a piece of Turkey transplanted to Neukölln, or is it creating something entirely new? Men drinking tea in its courtyard, are they preserving a static tradition – or are they actively crafting new forms of religious and cultural practice in a transnational space? Similarly, when manuscripts from Damascus, Baghdad, and Isfahan are digitized in the Qalamos Project, they don’t simply move from physical to digital space – they enter new networks of meaning and interpretation. These spaces exemplify what might be called “cosmopolitan realism” – the recognition that cultural practices and identities are increasingly shaped by global connections rather than local rootedness alone.

Our traditional vocabulary of cultural heritage – focused on ownership, location, and authenticity – emerged in a world of nation-states and fixed boundaries. But today’s cultural flows refuse to respect these neat categories. A Syrian artist in Berlin creates works that are simultaneously local and global. A digital archive in Germany makes Persian manuscripts accessible to scholars in Tehran and Texas alike. The stumbling stones (Stolpersteine) scattered through Berlin’s streets mark absences that connect multiple geographical points into networks of memory. These aren’t just isolated examples but indicators of a fundamental shift in how cultural heritage operates in contemporary society.

The implications are profound. Rather than asking where cultural heritage should be located, we might ask how it moves and transforms. Instead of treating cultural artifacts as fixed objects with single “homes,” we could recognize them as nodes in complex networks of meaning and memory. This shift requires new frameworks for preservation and interpretation that acknowledge the multiply-situated nature of cultural heritage in our interconnected world.

Take the Jewish Museum Berlin, which offers an unexpected model for this new approach. Rather than simply displaying artifacts, it creates spaces that make visitors physically experience displacement and disorientation. Through Daniel Libeskind’s architecture, the museum suggests that understanding cultural heritage might require us to leave behind our comfortable assumptions about place and belonging. The building itself becomes a metaphor for how cultural memory operates in a globalized world – through disruption, connection, and transformation rather than static preservation.

This doesn’t mean ignoring histories of colonialism or dismissing claims for restitution. Rather, it means recognizing that cultural heritage in our globalized world might need new frameworks altogether. Instead of asking “Where does this belong?” we might ask “What connections does this enable?” Instead of “Whose heritage is this?” we might consider “What conversations does this start?” These questions open up new possibilities for how we understand and engage with cultural heritage.

Back in the Neues Museum, Nefertiti’s gaze takes on new meaning. Perhaps she’s not looking in any single direction but rather witnessing how cultural heritage in the 21st century refuses to stay put – flowing across borders, spawning digital copies, generating new meanings, and creating unexpected connections. As global flows intensify, her presence in Berlin becomes less about ownership and more about the possibilities and challenges of cultural heritage in an interconnected world.

The challenge, then, isn’t simply to determine where objects belong, but to understand how they, and the practices they embody, help us navigate a world where meaning and memory flow in multiple directions at once. In this light, Berlin’s memory institutions become not just repositories of the past but laboratories for understanding how cultural heritage works in an age of global flows – sites where we can begin to imagine new ways of preserving and sharing culture that reflect our interconnected reality.


VM

Writing, ideas & questions & interesting stuff

Welcome to our intellectual playground! This space is designed for curious minds to share, explore, and wonder together. Whether you’ve stumbled upon a fascinating article, have a burning question, or want to share an idea that keeps you up at night – this is your platform.

What Can You Share?

  • Interesting Links: Found an article that made you think differently? Share it! (Pro tip: Tell us why it caught your attention)
  • Questions: No question is too big or too small. Sometimes the simplest questions lead to the most interesting discussions
  • Ideas: Share those “what if” moments or connections you’ve made between different concepts
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  • Academic Mysteries: Stuck on a concept? Share what confuses you – sometimes explaining our confusion is the first step to clarity

Guidelines for Engagement

  1. Be Specific: Instead of just dropping a link, tell us what drew you to it
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  3. Build On Ideas: Feel free to connect different thoughts and create new conversations
  4. Keep It Respectful: All thoughtful contributions are valuable

How to Comment

Simply use the comment section below to:

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Remember: There are no “silly” questions or “obvious” observations. The most meaningful discussions often start with someone brave enough to say “I wonder…”


Ready to start? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

CommResearch, guiding questions to write a prospectus

As you start crafting your prospectus, we invite you to engage with the following guiding questions. These prompts are designed not as a rigid template, but as a scaffold to support your thinking and writing process. They aim to encourage depth of thought and clarity of expression in your research proposal.

Remember, the journey of research is often as illuminating as its destination. These questions are not meant to constrain your creativity or prescribe a single path forward. Rather, they serve as points of reflection, inviting you to explore the nuances of your chosen topic and to articulate your ideas with precision and purpose.

As you consider each section, we encourage you to think critically about how your research might contribute to existing knowledge, challenge prevailing assumptions, or open new avenues of inquiry. At the same time, we ask you to remain open to the possibilities that may emerge as you delve deeper into your subject matter.

Your responses need not be exhaustive or final. Instead, view this as an opportunity to map the contours of your research landscape, identifying both the well-trodden paths and the unexplored territories that lie ahead. Your prospectus is a living document, one that will likely evolve as you progress in your research journey.

With that in mind, we offer the following questions as companions in your intellectual exploration:

Research Question and Objectives:

  • What is your main research question?
  • What are the sub-questions that will help you answer the main question?
  • What are the specific objectives of your research?
  • Why is this research question significant or relevant in your field?

Audience:

  • Who is the primary audience for your research?
  • Are there secondary audiences who might benefit from or be interested in your work?
  • How does your research topic relate to the interests or needs of your intended audience?
  • How will you tailor your writing and presentation to engage your chosen audience effectively?

Brief Literature Review:

  • What are the key theories or concepts relevant to your research question?
  • (Who are the main scholars or researchers in this area?)
  • What are the current debates or gaps in the literature related to your topic?
  • How does your proposed research fit into or contribute to the existing body of knowledge?

Proposed Methodology:

  • What research methods do you plan to use (e.g., qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods)?
  • Why are these methods appropriate for addressing your research question?
  • What specific data collection techniques will you employ (e.g., surveys, interviews, archival research)?
  • How do you plan to analyze your data?
  • What potential challenges do you foresee in your chosen methodology, and how might you address them?

Potential Implications of the Research:

  • How might your research contribute to theoretical understanding in your field?
  • What practical applications could your research have?
  • How might your findings impact policy, practice, or future research in your area?
  • Are there any potential ethical implications or considerations in your research?

Feedback Questions:

  • What aspects of your prospectus do you feel are strongest?
  • Where do you feel you need the most guidance or feedback?
  • Are there specific areas where you’re unsure about your approach or argumentation?
  • What kind of resources or support do you think you’ll need to successfully complete this research?

As you address these prompts, remember that the most compelling research often springs from a place of genuine curiosity and a willingness to grapple with complexity. We look forward to engaging with your ideas and supporting you in this exciting academic endeavor.