Season of Migration to the North. Zong!. Citizen: An American Lyric. What these texts share in common is their depiction of certain marginalized groups’ struggles. Season of Migration to the North depicts the epistemic and physical violence that colonization inflicts upon the colonized. Zong! attempts to articulate the horrors of the Middle Passage and reckons with a history whose only source is the shipowners’ insurance document. Citizen lays bare the microaggressions African-Americans experience every day in the U.S.

On the face of it, assigning such texts in the classroom, especially with the renewed public consideration of the Black Lives Matter movement this past summer seems appropriate — even necessary. However, without the right expertise, nuance and critical apparatus, such texts are flattened; reading and discussing them in classrooms reenact, rather than write against, the violence they depict. Here, I am concerned with teaching difficult material in the humanities specifically, although this problem extends into the social sciences and sciences.

When professors who are not experts in fields such as Black studies, postcolonial studies and critical race theory are asked to diversify their syllabi, the response tends to be one of two: Some professors refuse, claiming they are unequipped to teach such texts because they are outside their areas of expertise. As for others, they are eager to incorporate these texts into their classrooms to learn with and from students, and to meet student demand for such ideas.

The first response is lazy, to say the least. If you have signed up to teach at NYU Abu Dhabi, then you have signed up for taking on a challenge, especially when it comes to knowledge and areas of expertise beyond your immediate comfort zone. Similar to how students are willing to learn about cultures, theories and ideas that are not indigenous to their cultures, professors should be willing to educate themselves and teach Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter — not just Locke and Hume. Teaching at NYUAD is not like teaching at any other institution of higher education: as a faculty member at a place that sees itself as a pioneer in international, intercultural and interdisciplinary research, one’s duty toward their students and the institution is to engage with difference.

However, once professors begin to teach such texts, they must know that it is no easy task, and must be willing to engage these texts in a careful and nuanced manner. They must accompany these texts with critical apparatuses that challenge the conventional (read: Western) ways we are taught to look at texts. Without such apparatus, students are at a loss for words — quite literally — for they would not have a vocabulary with which to engage such intellectually challenging and emotionally taxing material.

For example, if a professor decides to teach Season of Migration to the North, they must make sure this reading material is accompanied by a certain theoretical text — for example, Dipesh Chakrabarty’s essay “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” Although it discusses the Indian context, this essay gives students of postcolonial literature, generally speaking, prerequisite vocabulary needed to articulate the epistemological violence that colonialism inflicts on the (post)colonial subject.

In a famous scene in Season of Migration to the North, there is a vivid description of the main character’s — Mustafa Saeed’s — library. Most of his books, including the Quran, are in English. What does one make of this scene? One could easily assume that Saeed is obsessed with the West, or is self-Orientalizing. But when one reads Chakrabarty, one realizes that it is much more complicated than that. With Chakrabarty, one comes to understand the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of “decolonizing” oneself when one is schooled — quite literally by the colonizing British powers — in a certain way of viewing and understanding the world that is hegemonic and Western. In this light, Mustafa Saeed isn’t “self-Orientalizing”; rather, his all-English library is a symptom of his postcoloniality.

This is but one (rather trivial) example of how theory opens up avenues and gives us tools to engage texts we would otherwise misread. Without the theory, then, postcolonial subjects in the classroom might feel unable to articulate their experiences; similarly, non-postcolonial subjects might make assumptions about the culture or situation in question. Therefore, the net outcome of reading and discussing a “diverse” text in the classroom backfires: those who do not know about the context in question will come out of it with false knowledge and assumptions, and those whose experience this text is supposed to represent — however partially — feel violated, frustrated and offended.

This is not to say that professors should not teach this material, but rather that they should teach it with and through theory, in addition to relying on other resources. As professors set themselves up to teach this material — as they should — they must do their research. They should consult experts on parts they are unsure about. Most importantly, they should be frank with their students about what they know and don’t know: no amount of preparation will eliminate the possibility of pitfalls, and professors should own up to their limitations. And if they have a friend or colleague who can come and give a guest lecture about something within their area of expertise, they should, by all means, extend this invitation.

Books can be written about this topic. This article is meant to start a discussion. It is meant to get students and faculty thinking. It is meant to provoke discussion. It is my case for theory. It has helped me untangle many complexities, paradoxes and knots — academic and “real” — and I think it will help you too.