I believe that writing is a reflexive process, not a product—a method that allows the writer to question her own ideas, assumptions, and idiom as rigorously as she does the world around her. I emphasize to students that literary and critical analysis are not like being a tourist who observes a foreign milieu and returns with photos and souvenirs to cherish as reminders of the trip taken. Rather, knowledge is not a thing at all, but something made and renewed everyday, as we write. In place of the notion of knowledge as an exogenous product, I value paradigms that hold it to be constructed, fluid, and constantly refined through writing—a territory that we traverse and map regularly, alongside a community of collaborators. Writing and critical analysis enable us to glimpse infinite possibilities within the uncertain space of this journey, the void of the unknown. These are tools for transmuting our suppositions into art, for creating a beacon to guide fellow travelers through the dark.