Is there an “Italian mind”? Does one react in a certain way “because one is a woman”? Do “Westerners” exist?

Suppose you spent a long time (weeks, months, perhaps even years) understanding a complicated topic. You then write an article or a book about it. Where should you start from? Should you explain all or just assume to have readers who more or less share your expertise?

The question is certainly relevant for all philosophers, but perhaps even more for people working on niches, such as the history of Mīmāṃsā deontic thought or the early developments of the Maṇipravāḷa soteriology in South India and so on. Sure, it would be nice to speak with people who shared out interest and to whom we did not need to explain all, but these people are very few.

If you have a small group, it is relatively easy to activate your students, who will anyway not be able to hide in the last row of a bigger class. Symmetrical reasons may make it easier to engage a class of undergraduates on a topic they have already discussed, say, vegetarianism, abortion, foreign policy… But what about bigger classes focusing on a non-mainstream topic? In order for students to make interesting contributions, they need to prepare. But, in order to decide to prepare, they need to be motivated. How do you solve this Catch-22?

I, for one, often try a combination of the following methods:

1. I start each class (including the first one) with 2–3 questions to be answered in written form. The first two questions give them the chance to get back to what we did in the previous unit and to see what remains unclear. The last one is a thought-provoking question which is meant to show a connection between the topic of the present unit and some broader issue they might already be familiar with. The last question does not need, therefore, to be answered “correctly”. The point is just to stimulate critical thinking.
2. By the way, on the first class I present a longer list of basic questions on topics which look easy (say, what was the Buddha’s full name? In which language did he write?). This gives me the chance to clear the ground from basic misunderstandings and offers to the students some insight in how much they do not know. They are usually quite happy when at the last unit they realise they can now answer all questions.
3. When I cannot presuppose any knowledge of South Asian thought, I often mix small lecturing units (say 5–10′) to “whispering groups”. In the whispering groups students are invited to just spontaneously form small groups of 3–4 people, discuss what I said and find possible objections and weak points. They are also allowed to formulate questions in case they did not understand. These moments of critical reflection are, as a matter of fact, way more productive when students do their readings in advance and they usually realise it soon enough and start preparing.
4. For each class, I select some readings of pre-modern sources and during class I ask students to read parts of the texts and explain them. Again, they soon realise they need to prepare and start preparing.
5. Something I did only twice was to have open a wiki on the topic of the class (say “Linguistic Communication as an instrument of knowledge”). Students were divided into bigger groups (5–6 people). After a short introduction to each unit they would be asked to sit together in such groups and contribute to a certain part of the wiki (say, “Thomas Reid’s approach to testimony”). Again, it works smoothly if they are well-prepared. But even if they are not, they can do their homework during class after having assigned different duties to each member of the group. The results were qualitatively mixed, but the students liked it.
6. Then, there are the usual suspects, Socratic dialogue, thought-provoking questions, short presentations in class, reading together.

7. What about you? What works with your students?

   (So far, I taught in various universities in Italy, Hungary and Austria.)

If you write on Plato, you should start in medias res. If you write on Thomas Aquinas, you can do the same (unless you are writing for a journal specialising on something completely different, say, business ethics). If you write on a slightly less known author, I would suggest adding at least the dates of birth and death and perhaps a short description of their main work (say “the epistemologist XW (1200–1250)”).
What about writing on South Asian philosophy? If you are writing for a non-specialist journal, you will need to explain a lot, since no one will know even the main authors and schools you will name. Nonetheless, this does not mean that each new piece on South Asian philosophy should resemble a pale summary of scholarhip on X. Even if you need to tell who Jayanta was and what Nyāyā means, this does not mean that you cannot make an original contribution to the debate.

1. Just start with what you discovered. Did Jayanta think that justification is not needed in the case of the “ought” domain? Are you the first one who noticed this move? Be sure that this is your departing point.
2. You can then move to the background needed to appreciate the depth of your discovery. Do not just start with the background, otherwise your reader will think there is nothing new and close your article before reaching its core.
3. Be sure that theme and rheme are well distinguished in your article. The reader should not be confused about what is just a short summary of the background and what is your new and original contribution.
4. Please remember that an article is not a book. You can only convey one point. Don’t try to overdo or you will not manage to convey anything at all.

Should you send a paper to peer-review before or after having it proof-read and possibly edited by a native speaker (this is especially relevant if you are not a native speaker of English)?