Introduction – Marion Wrenn

Introduction

The much-beloved belief that “every writer needs a reader” fuels the work we do in NYUAD’s First-year Writing Seminars (FYWS). It informs the way we think about writers, readers, and writing as a form of critical thinking and communication. We not only cherish that idea, we test it regularly by putting it into practice in one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse academic settings in the world. First-year students are joining a student population representing 115 nationalities, a group of people who speak more than 110 languages. So, as you read these essays, you are participating in a long chain of engaged transformations: these authors were once brand-new first-year students; as students in FYWS they became authors of original essays; and now you are becoming a reader of their wonderful work. If you are a student in one of our FYWS then, as you read Exit 11, we hope you’ll feel the implicit message in its pages: welcome to NYUAD. You are joining an amazing conversation-- as a reader and a writer.

It is hard to understate the value of learning to write clearly, powerfully, and well. It is equally hard to understate the necessity of learning to read widely and wisely. One of the things you will learn in a First-year Writing Seminar is to read closely, to pay attention. This is the first step in learning to write for a reader, and it is sometimes the first thing we forget to do. As a result, the FYWS create opportunities for students to slow down and reckon with an array of complex, challenging, transformative texts. That sense-making impulse is one of the features that unify the collection of essays included in this volume. Read for the steady heartbeat of the work we asked these students to do: Pay attention. Be curious. Read closely. Envision your reader. Make arguments. Make sense.

If you are reading this introduction, then Exit 11 is at your fingertips; and it is there, perhaps, because of a class assignment. You’ve been asked to read an essay or two in these pages. If so: courage. These pieces unfold in surprising

ways. They will not only show you what it looks like when an author makes a thoughtful, persuasive argument about the significance of a chosen source or cultural practice, they’ll invite you to participate in that sense-making project. “What’s most rewarding about teaching FYWS, as well as reading the Exit 11 entries,” notes Dr. Piia Mustamaki, “is no doubt getting to witness the students’ own critical thinking flourish. This is also what I value the most in an essay, the powerful result of an imaginative, intellectual pursuit expressed confidently in the student writer’s own voice.” As our faculty and instructors will attest, part of the pleasure of teaching in the Writing Program is the way we see first-year students find their own voices as they become attuned to the demands of scholarly writing. Part of the pleasure of reading these essays is in the way each writer situates their ideas among the ideas of others in order to create a sense of urgency and context for their analysis. We hope these wellcrafted essays inspire you to craft your own.

How are essays selected for Exit 11? As Dr. Ken Nielsen notes, the best essays “are curious, engaging, and, oftentimes, imperfect. They provide you with a sense of the writer and take the reader’s experience seriously. They argue and they allow the reader to disagree.” In other words, excellence has many forms of expression; but a unifying feature of excellent essays is their capacity to engage a reader in the development of the author’s idea. The essays in this volume were competitively selected via a democratic editorial process, where every member of the editorial board votes on the merits of the submissions we received. We cast a wide net and sought essays from the array of classes that make up the First-year Writing Seminars: from “Slavery after Slavery” to “Saving Strangers” and “Making Sense of Scent”; from “Imagined Geographies” and “Street Food” to “Taste, Culture, and the Self”; from “History, Memory, and Forgetting” to “Power and Ethics in Photography” and “The Politics of Spectacle,” as well as “Real and Imagined: Women’s Writing Across Worlds.” Though the course themes vary widely, the essays form a coherent collection. Crucially, the essays included in this volume transcend their status as a “homework assignment” and reveal their authors as thoughtful human beings making sense of sources, asking analytical questions, using evidence to make sense of the very questions they’ve posed.

Let these essays teach you about the work of making creative, complex, (ir) reverent, ethically-sourced and cited arguments. In fact, you may notice that each essay follows a different citation format. The varying citation styles reflect the fact that our faculty draw upon their individual research methodologies, artistic practices, and areas of expertise to craft their seminars. Instead of collapsing all of the essays into a single format for an Exit 11 “house style,” we opted to showcase the various modes of citation so readers get a better sense of the logic and purpose of accurate citation within a range of disciplines.

That’s precisely the kind of work you will be asked to do in the writing course you have selected. And we’re here to help, if you need us. The team of Writing Program Faculty members, Writing Instructors, Writing Center consultants, and Peer Tutors who assist and serve students in the FYWS are poised to help you see what you are capable of – and then push beyond that limit. The FYWS are designed to help you develop a persuasive and compelling presence on the page. We’ll help you find your voice and express your ideas as a thinker and a scholar, as a reader and a writer.

MARION WRENN

DIRECTOR OF THE WRITING PROGRAM

Mosaic lamps capture the rich culture of the Middle East; they illuminated thousands of homes in Turkey and the Middle East, reiterating the people’s values. I captured this image in one of the shops in the Textile Souk, Al Fahidi Street. Unknown to the object, the shiny colored glass patterns caught my attention from afar. The handcrafted hanging lamps are among the few jewels you would find in the shops of the United Arab Emirates.

“Illuminating Traditions” by Sashank Silwal