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Walk backwards

Not literally. But: retrace a walk you’ve already done.

Go back to a neighbourhood you visited in October or November. Walk the same streets. See what’s changed and what hasn’t.

The question: What did you miss the first time?

First time, you were scanning. Looking for “Middle Eastern presence,” for tensions, for things to notice. You were a tourist of your own attention.

Now go back. You know this place slightly. What do you see differently?

Tsing: What survival strategies did you miss when you were looking for the obvious ones? Scott: What was resisting legibility that you didn’t notice because you were looking at what was visible? Macfarlane: What relations existed that you walked right past?

One specific thing to notice: Look for something ordinary that you ignored before. A shop that’s been there forever. A tree. A bench where the same people sit. Something unremarkable.

Spend time with it. Why is it still there? What does its ordinariness tell you?

The interesting thing isn’t always the thing that catches your eye. Sometimes it’s the thing that doesn’t.

Walk backwards. See what you missed.

Why Should Anybody Care About Your Tension?

November 5, 2025

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.

What makes 1b work differently?

  • Uses instability language: “Nonetheless,” “However,” “although,” “inconsistent,” “anomaly”
  • 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:

Hayes: [pattern #1]
Andersen and Freedman: [pattern #2]
Dorsey: [pattern #3]

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:

  1. Instability: What exactly doesn’t fit in your tension? (Use instability language: however, although, but…)
  2. Costs: What can’t we understand if we leave this unresolved? (What intellectual cost does the COMMUNITY bear – not you personally?)
  3. 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

  1. Function over form: Academic writing’s job is to help readers understand better, not to explain what you know.
  2. Problems, not gaps: Don’t just identify what we don’t know. Show why not knowing matters.
  3. Instability language matters: Words like “however,” “although,” “inconsistent” signal to readers that there’s a problem worth solving.
  4. 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.
  5. Background creates stability, problems need instability: Don’t start with what we all agree on. Start with what doesn’t work.

A Reflection After Starting The Light Eaters

I’m hoping you’ve begun reading the book by now. If you have, something has probably unsettled you. Maybe it was the fern with swimming sperm that sabotages its competitors. Maybe it was the realisation that every thought you’ve ever had was built from glucose manufactured by a plant. Maybe it was Theophrastus—that fork in the road Western philosophy didn’t take, where plants might have remained “autonomous beings with desires” rather than instruments at the bottom of Aristotle’s ladder.

Or maybe you’re still deciding whether any of this matters.

Here’s what struck me: Schlanger writes that botanists “were learning that plants are capable of” things that are “reshaping the meaning of ‘plant’ before our very eyes.” The field is “eating itself alive with contradictions.” This isn’t a book about what we know—it’s a book about watching a scientific field realise the limits of what it thought it knew.

Which raises a question I want you to sit with:

What happens when the frameworks we use to understand something turn out to be too small?

This isn’t just about plants. It’s about what we do when our instruments for measuring intelligence, consciousness, agency, or meaning prove inadequate to what’s actually there. Schlanger points out that we only recently granted consciousness to animals—dolphins, parrots, octopuses got their certificate in 2012 from Cambridge. Before that? They were Cartesian machines. Reflexes without experience.

The history she traces is damning: from Aristotle’s scala naturae (plants at the bottom, rational men at the top) to live dissection of dogs in amphitheaters because they couldn’t really feel pain, just reflexive responses. These weren’t fringe positions. These were scientific consensus. Supported by the best minds of their time. Defended by evidence.

And then they changed.

So what does it mean that plant science is now in that same moment of rupture? That one camp of botanists insists plants are intelligent, even conscious, while another camp says those are “distinctly animal-centric notions” that do “a disservice to their essential plantness”?

Maybe the question isn’t which camp is right. Maybe the question is: why do we need to recognise something as “like us” before we take it seriously?

Theophrastus understood this in 300 BCE. He used the metaphor of “heartwood” not because he thought trees had hearts, but because “it is by the help of the better known that we must pursue the unknown.” He was trying to meet his readers where they were, using their language to point toward something entirely other. He knew the comparison was just a bridge. He knew plants were their own category of being.

But Western thought went with Aristotle instead. A ladder. A hierarchy. Intelligence defined by how close something is to rational (male) humanity.


When Schlanger traces the history of plant science, she goes: Aristotle → Theophrastus → (2000 year gap) → Descartes → Darwin → contemporary botany.

That gap kept nagging at me—it’s not like that in the so-called Middle East nothing was going on between Theophrastus and Descartes . So I went looking more closely.

In the 13th century, while Europe was still mostly copying ancient Greek botanical texts, there was this guy Ibn al-Baytar from Málaga who spent years travelling from Spain through North Africa to Syria, directly observing and collecting plants. Over 1,400 of them. Including 200 that had apparently never been documented before.

His teacher, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, had been doing something that sounds a lot like what we’d now call empirical method—actually testing things, separating “I heard this” from “I observed this.” Ibn al-Baytar’s book (Kitab al-Jami fi al-Adwiya al-Mufrada) was apparently a major botanical reference in both the Islamic world and Europe until the 16th century.

Schlanger doesn’t mention him. Or any of that tradition.

I’m not trying to catch her in some gotcha moment. The book is good. But I keep wondering: what does it mean that this entire tradition of botanical science—centuries of it—just disappears from the story? Not because she’s malicious, but because the framework itself seems to make certain knowledge traditions invisible?

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. But it feels relevant to what we’re doing in the course.


I started wondering about how different languages handle these concepts.

In biblical Hebrew, apparently there was no word for “nature.” The term teva (טבע) showed up later, maybe under Islamic influence. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what it means to not have that separation linguistically. Like, if your language doesn’t divide “natural world” from “divine presence,” does that actually change what you can perceive?

In Arabic, the word for “plant” is nabat (نبات), which comes from a root about growth, sprouting—the emphasis seems to be on becoming rather than just being a thing. And I learned that Arabic has 11 different words for stages of love, and the most common one, hubb, shares its root with the word for “seed.” Seed as in: that which has the potential to grow into something.

I don’t know if this is just interesting trivia or if it actually matters. But when Schlanger writes that plants “sense things we can’t even imagine, and occupy a world of information we can’t see”—she’s describing the limits of human sensory apparatus, sure. But maybe also the limits of how our language lets us think about sensing, knowing, responding?

Like, can you even have a concept of “plant consciousness” in a language that never separated consciousness from plant life in the first place?


I fell down a rabbit hole reading about Kabbalah again. There’s this thing called the Tree of Life, which isn’t just a metaphor but like… a diagram of how divine energy flows through creation? The idea seems to be that material reality and spiritual reality aren’t separate—they’re connected through what gets called a “law of correspondences.” Plant intelligence, divine intelligence, human intelligence—all part of the same emanative structure.

I don’t fully understand it. But it made me wonder: is this “mysticism”? Or is it just a different epistemology—one that never needed to “prove” plant consciousness because it never assumed plants lacked it?

I also remembered that in Islamic thought, the word ‘ilm (علم)—usually translated as “knowledge”—doesn’t really map onto Western concepts. It’s not just information. It’s more like… knowledge plus understanding plus the action you take because of that knowledge? All integrated. And there’s this Arabic proverb: “A man remains knowing as long as he searches for knowledge. When he thinks he knows, he has become ignorant.”

Which feels impossible to fit into a framework where knowledge means certainty, completion, mastery.

Maybe that’s the point?


Even as I write “Islamic botanical knowledge” or “Jewish mysticism” or “Arabic linguistic structures,” I’m aware I might be imposing categories that distort the thing I’m trying to describe.

Because these traditions emerged in a region where Jewish scholars studied with Muslim teachers who were translating Greek, Persian, and Indian texts. Christians and Muslims and Jews worked in the same translation houses. Arabic was a shared intellectual language regardless of religious identity. Ibn al-Baytar learned from teachers across different traditions. Maimonides wrote in Arabic. The Kabbalah developed through conversations with Sufism.

So when we say “Middle Eastern epistemologies,” what are we even talking about? Religious traditions? Linguistic families? Geographic proximity? Resistance to Western categories?

I honestly don’t know. And maybe that uncertainty is useful.


Prompt for this week:

Look again at Schlanger’s argument. So far into the first 50 pages or so, she presents it as: “(Western) science finally catching up to what plants can actually do.”

But what if the problem isn’t that science was slow to catch up? What if the framework itself—the whole apparatus of “proving” intelligence, “demonstrating” consciousness, needing Cambridge scientists to certify that animals are conscious—what if that entire structure is what’s too small?

I keep thinking about Ibn al-Baytar walking around collecting plants, testing them empirically, not getting stuck in philosophical debates about whether they had souls. And about these epistemologies that never needed to separate plants from consciousness because they organised knowledge differently from the start.

What would a botany look like that took both seriously? Not as nostalgia for some imagined past, but as a genuine alternative to the impasse Schlanger describes—where one camp insists plants are intelligent and the other camp says that’s anthropomorphic, and nobody can escape the terms of the debate.

So here’s what I want to think about together:

If intelligence is defined by those who already hold power, what forms of intelligence remain invisible? What becomes visible if we change the framework? What traditions of knowing about plants—not despite their difference from us, but through their difference—have been erased from the story we tell about botany?

I don’t have answers to these questions. That’s why I want to talk about them.

See you next session later in November.

After our first meeting – course overview & next steps

Dear all,

Good to finally meet you today. I’m glad we found each other, even if it took a bit of searching.
Since we had less time than planned, I wanted to send a brief overview of how this course works and what happens next.

Course Structure

We meet four times this semester:
Today (October 14) – Introduction ✓
November 18 (10:00-14:00, with lunch break) – First gathering: “What has been catching your attention?”
January 20 (10:00-14:00, with lunch break) – Second gathering: “What patterns are you noticing?”
February 10 (10:00-14:00, with lunch break) – Final gathering: “What questions do you have now?”

Between these meetings, you walk Berlin and read your chosen book. No assignments, no check-ins from me—just sustained attention to the city. I’ll send occasional short provocations (questions to carry with you) via email.

The Three Books

Choose ONE of these to read over the next weeks:
Anna Tsing – The Mushroom at the End of the World
About survival and collaboration across difference; how life persists in damaged landscapes.
James C. Scott – Seeing Like a State
About how states try to make people and places “legible” and how people resist simplification.
Robert Macfarlane – Is a River Alive?
About personhood, rights, and what gets counted as having agency in urban spaces.

Where to find them: Check the VÖBB (public library system) – you can search their catalogue online and reserve books. I also recommend the Libby app, which lets you borrow ebooks and audiobooks from VÖBB. All three books should be available there in various formats.

Until we meet again (November 18)

Your task is simple but demanding:

Choose your book – Read the descriptions, maybe sample each one if you can, then commit to one. Start reading it.
Walk Berlin – Go to neighbourhoods you’ve never been. Or walk familiar places differently. There’s no quota, no requirement for how much. Just pay attention when you do. What catches your eye? What makes you pause? What do you wonder about?

Complete the walking exercise I had planned for today – If you haven’t already: Walk for 20 minutes around campus or your neighbourhood. Notice what draws your attention. Write 2 paragraphs about what seemed important. You don’t need to send this to me—it’s for you, to begin practicing this kind of attention.

Let the question follow you: “What survives in cities?” Don’t try to answer it yet. Just notice when it becomes relevant to what you’re seeing.

Remember: we will never discuss the books directly in our sessions. They’re lenses that shape how you see, not topics we analyse. Let the book and the city have a private conversation.

Where to Find Course Materials

I will publish all messages and further materials for the course on my blog: https://nodiscipline.hypotheses.org/. I occasionally write essays there too inspired from the courses and our exchanges—so you might find reflections on questions we’re exploring together appearing there throughout the semester.

The Blackboard will remain open in case you need it for communication purposes, but the blog will be the main hub from my perspective.

A Note on Process

I know this course structure is unusual. Six weeks with no meetings, no clear assignments, just “walk and read and pay attention” can feel uncertain. That’s intentional.
The course trusts that sustained attention—to a city, to a complex text—will generate insights that lectures couldn’t. Your particular background, your discipline, your way of seeing will reveal things my attention would miss.
If this feels uncomfortable, sit with that discomfort. See what it teaches you.

Questions?

If anything is unclear, if you can’t find the books, if you’re lost (literally or metaphorically), email me. I’m here.
Otherwise: go walk. Read. Pay attention. I’ll send a small provocation in a couple of weeks.

See you November 18th (or in the sessions of the Writing course on Wednesday).
Victoria

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

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ai and the Middle East, Reaching for the Stars: The Middle East’s Celestial Ambitions and Archaeologies

As billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk pursue their ruthlessly ambitious visions of space colonization and off-world mining, they cast these endeavors as an escape from the limitations and “stasis” afflicting Earth. Yet their rhetoric echoes earlier epochs of extractivism and settler colonialism that have indelibly shaped the Middle East. What if we viewed the “new space race” not just through the Silicon Valley technoscientific imaginary, but through the region’s own rich astronomical legacies, cultural cosmologies, and fraught histories with colonial expansionism?

The Islamic Golden Age witnessed influential pioneers like al-Biruni, who calculated the radius of the Earth to a startling degree of precision, and Ibn al-Shatir, whose modeling of the solar system improved on Ptolemy’s geocentric theories. This continued a tradition of engaging with the cosmos that stretched back to prehistoric astronomical sites like Göbekli Tepe and Chogha Zanbil’s remarkable 5,000-year-old ziggurat. Al-Battani, another key figure, made significant advancements in trigonometry and astronomy, laying the groundwork for future space exploration. Such achievements laid foundations for subsequent space science and exploration, providing a rich heritage that informs current Middle Eastern initiatives.

Today, nations across the Middle East pursue ambitious space programs as symbols of technological ascendance and economic diversification. The UAE’s Hope Probe, which entered Mars’ orbit in February 2021, marked a significant milestone as the first Arab mission to another planet. Turkey’s Turksat satellites enhance communications infrastructure, supporting everything from broadcasting to internet services. Iran’s Simorgh rocket has successfully launched domestic satellites, despite international sanctions and geopolitical tensions. Israel’s private SpaceIL venture, which aimed for the Moon with its Beresheet lander, demonstrated the potential of non-state actors in the space race. Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan University operates a nanosatellite program, emphasizing education and innovation in space technologies.

Yet these high-profile endeavors also provoke polarizing debates around priorities and justice. Immense state resources funnel into the astronomic budgets and infrastructures for space exploration in countries still mired in poverty, conflict, and gender inequality. For instance, the UAE’s Mars mission is estimated to have cost around $200 million, a significant investment for a nation with ongoing socioeconomic challenges. Critics argue that such funds could address pressing issues like healthcare, education, and housing. However, proponents claim that these space programs drive technological innovation, economic growth, and national prestige.

There are also complex threads interweaving space activities with regional security dilemmas and geopolitical contests for primacy. The same rocket technologies enabling satellite launches stoke fears of latent weapons delivery systems. Iran’s space program, for example, has faced scrutiny from the international community over concerns that its advancements in rocket technology could be repurposed for military use. International governance regimes aimed at limiting proliferation, such as the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), could constrain national space ambitions. Rivals like Iran and Saudi Arabia beam signals of their technological capabilities through duelling spacecraft reveals, showcasing their advancements in a highly competitive geopolitical landscape.

Moreover, histories of colonial occupation, extractivism, and territorial conquest loom over contemporary space ventures in the region. The ostensible ability of whichever power “gets there first” to lay claim to celestial resources evokes traumas perpetuated by European and Ottoman expansionist projects. From Palestine to Western Sahara, the settler-colonial quest to “empty lands” is scorched into the Middle Eastern consciousness. This historical context adds a layer of complexity to current space endeavors, as nations grapple with the ethical implications of space exploration and resource extraction.

Space activity also carries weighty environmental repercussions that disproportionately impact the arid climate. Intensifying launches deposit particulates and greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere, contributing to climate change. The UAE, for example, conducted several rocket launches in a short period, raising concerns about the cumulative environmental impact. Accumulating orbital debris shrouds the night sky, posing risks to both current and future space missions. On an overheating planet farmed for its last drops of oil, water, and lithium, venturing outwards may seem like an escape, but it risks replicating destructive patterns of resource exploitation and environmental degradation.

Speculative writers like Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari and Mustafa Mahmoud offer Islamic visions of space exploration rooted in traditions of itinerant curiosity and contemplations of divine creation. The Quran metaphorically lauds those who “ponder the creation of the heavens and earth” and celebrates knowledge. Yet there are also warnings against transcending human limits and ethical guardrails through vain conquest. These cultural and religious perspectives provide a rich tapestry of thought that can inform a more holistic approach to space exploration.

Perhaps, ultimately, the quest is less for escaping earthly confines and more for addressing the mindsets and forces driving humanity towards those seeming limits in the first place. From the region’s foundation as a cradle of celestial investigation, a Middle Eastern space ethics and jurisprudence of the cosmos could emerge. One expanding humanity’s eco-spiritual consciousness rather than its footprint, rehabilitating outer space as a true common heritage before it is irrevocably enclosed. This approach would honor the region’s historical legacies while addressing contemporary challenges, offering a vision of space exploration that is inclusive, ethical, and sustainable.