Deborah Williams

The benefits of applying the best aspects of composition classes to higher education in general...

At least once a semester, I have a conversation that goes something like this: a colleague looks at her students' essays and moans, "They just can't write." When I ask how much class time she spends talking about student writing, I'm told quite sharply that "there is way too much material to cover to spend time on that, so I just give them a handout.

In uncertain times, what could be more comforting than the certainty of bread?

I pull a perfectly crusty boule from my oven. The kitchen smells so good that my children, who are 15 and 19, shuffle out of their rooms, eyes bleary from online learning and video chatting with college friends scattered around the world. The three of us look down at the Instagram-ready loaf.

Opinion | Discovering Feminist Students in the Middle East

On Campus ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - "My grandmother told me that the man is the head and the woman is the neck," said an East European student in my class. "It makes me so mad. I don't want to be the neck."

Staging Octavia Butler in Abu Dhabi

The Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Jean Nouvel, opened in November after years of delay and a cost rumored to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The same weekend as LAD's grand opening, the NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center hosted the world premiere of Parable of the Sower, an opera composed by the singer/songwriter Toshi Reagon, a queer Brooklyn-based activist, and based on the prophetic novel by Octavia Butler.

When It Comes To Raising My Sons, I Constantly Wonder, 'Have I Done Enough?'

My boys are 18 and 15-their silky baby cheeks have long since vanished in whiffs of aftershave and occasional razor stubble and when they hug me, I can feel the muscles bunching across their shoulders. I think to myself, "they're good boys," but then like a malevolent ghost the thought floats in: what if I'm wrong?

What Would Hannah Gadsby Do?

What Would Hannah Gadsby Do? You can keep your Jesus bracelets with their WWJD reminders. I'm getting a bracelet that asks WWHGD: What Would Hannah Gadsby Do? Ever since I watched Nanette, her one-hour comedy show that everyone you know is probably telling you to watch (they're right; you should), I haven't been able to get Hannah out of my mind.

Learning That Anything Is Possible (At Fifty-five)

I'm fifty-five. It's a number that is elegant in its doubleness, its mirrored simplicity. I am half-way to ten, eleven times. I am also half-way to sixty, which seems impossible and yet it is mathematically inevitable, no matter if I spend twice my age on skin cream.

Teaching a class of students from myriad countries and backgrounds (essay)

"Is that what really happened?" The student who asks me this question is not being disingenuous. We are in a literature class that is part of New York University Abu Dhabi's core curriculum, and he is pointing to pictures in Art Spiegelman's book Maus that show starving Auschwitz prisoners being beaten by Nazi guards.

Finding a "teachable moment" in the Kavanaugh hearings

By Deborah Lindsay Williams @mannahattamamma My son is seventeen. He regularly goes to parties where there are girls and lots of booze, and he doesn't keep a calendar, unless you call "writing things on my hand so I don't forget" a calendar.

Cosmopolitan Reading in the Classroom: Local and Global

Co-authored essay about the global liberal arts

Breaking out of the muffin tins: A Wrinkle in Time, Cosmopolitanism, and Children's Literature

The story of Hekayah: a true celebration of the founding of the UAE

Over the years, the stories on the Hekayah stage have illuminated every aspect of life in the Emirates H ow do you celebrate the founding of a country? Fireworks, maybe a parade or two, give people the day off work so they can enjoy themselves.

I'm sad to say that my homeland is no longer safe

When I told friends about our family's impending move to Abu Dhabi, the first question anyone asked me is whether or not I would have to "cover". They'd say: "Will you have to ..." and then wave their hands around their heads, as if to indicate a beekeeper's helmet or a halo.

The female adventurer who disproved Virginia Woolf's theory

I'm an antiquities geek. I love archival research, looking at letters and manuscripts from bygone centuries; I get a thrill from walking up an ancient staircase and seeing the grooves in the stone created by the thousands, maybe millions, of feet that have preceded mine.

The unsettling beauty of the Markazi exhibition and the questions it prompts

I went to Louvre Abu Dhabi earlier this month and because I'm a member I didn't have to wait in line. But I was delighted by the fact that there was a line, perhaps because I am a recovering New Yorker for whom "waiting in line" is a quasi-perpetual occupation, as is the discussion about whether one waits "on" line or "in" line.

NYUAD professor Deborah Quinn's real-life adventures in self-publishing

"This is a terrific read, filled with plot twists, history, humour and romance..." "A great book for teenage girls ..." The handful of readers who have taken the time to fill out a customer review on Amazon's website are well-disposed towards The Time Locket, a self-published novel [ Amazon.com] by Deborah Quinn.

There are some occasions when development doesn't feel like advancement

Deborah Lindsay Williams finds resonance in a Joni Mitchell lyric from the 1970s On a beautiful afternoon last week, I had a momentary bout of fitness, so I loaded my inflatable stand-up paddle-board into the car and drove to a spot along the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Street where there was a launch spot into the mangroves.

Getting lost in Abu Dhabi's ceaseless evolution

The other night I got lost on Al Maryah island. True, it's not a very big island, and true, you'd think that on an island you could just head to the water and then get your bearings, but it's impossible to get to the water's edge unless you're on foot, and I was in a car, with a google map that looked like a lace-making pattern rather than roadway directions.

How do you enforce a law against bad taste in clothing?

Last summer, before we moved to Abu Dhabi, we went to France for almost two weeks, including a week in Paris. I spent hours before we left New York agonising about my wardrobe. What could I wear strolling down the Champs-Elysées that wouldn't brand me as a tourist or, worse, an American?

Everyone speaks Ikeanese, but who's fluent in Assembly?

Heading into my third year as an Abu Dhabi resident, I have learnt what may be the only truly global language: Ikeanese. I now converse fluently in the language of Hemnes, Ektorp, and Billy; I can make myself understood in Expedit and Solsta.

Do they mean us? Travel tips don't reflect who we are

Sometimes travel tips don't reflect the reality of a country or a culture, argues Deborah Williams The other day I was asked to talk to an American freelance reporter who was working on an article about travel tips for women visiting the Emirates.

Death is everywhere

Donna Tartt's novel about a 13-year-old boy who survives a museum bombing and embarks on a complex journey tries to be too many things - thriller, love story, coming-of-age tale - and loses focus as a result, writes Deborah Lindsay Williams

Arcadia: The human wreckage of a failed hippie commune

Arcadia, Lauren Groff's second novel, is a bit like the hippie commune at its centre: sprawling, chaotic, wildly optimistic in its scope, seemingly headed for sentimental failure, until - unexpectedly - it works.

Novel about English saint reveals a seer and a sage

If ever you think about saints, how do you see them? Static figures with arms piously outstretched, perhaps, or maybe suffering tortures in the name of their faith? Reading , Nicola Griffith's painstakingly researched novel about the early life of St Hilda, will give you a very different picture.