The language and perceptions surrounding a single term, such as "race," pose enormous challenges for scholars. So how do they go about constructing essays on such complex subjects?

That will be the topic of a talk by K. Anthony Appiah, professor of Afro-American studies and of philosophy, as part of the Gordon Gray Faculty Lecture Series on The Craft of Scholarly Writing, on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 4 p.m. in Boylston Auditorium.

"Things that seem obvious to you because of your training, often need more explanation when you're talking to others," says Appiah, who has co-written a new book, Color Conscious, with Amy Gutman, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor and dean of the faculty at Princeton.

In his speech, "The Scholarly Essay: Writing as a Philosopher," Appiah wants to talk about how one writes for an educated public.

"The topic is about how to address people who aren't philosophers," Appiah said. "I'd like to discuss engaging one's professional skills without being difficult to follow. Students probably have very little sense of the processes that created what they read, or of what philosophers bring that's distinctive. You use professional knowledge but you can't use the normal professional language.

"I try to show people that the complexities philosophers worry about do matter," he continued, "but also, this needs to be done with a disciplinary humility. Everybody has things to say."

This is the second year for the lecture series, which features a different Harvard faculty member each semester. The series is sponsored by the Harvard Writing Project, an initiative of the Expository Writing Program.

In her 1994 study of undergraduate writing at Harvard, Nancy Sommers, Sosland Director of Expository Writing, concluded that students not only want writing to be a more visible part of their education, but wish that faculty members would talk more about themselves as writers.

Students were interested to know how scholars choose what projects to take on and how do they begin them? How does writing differ -- in its guiding questions, primary material, and evidence -- from discipline to discipline? And, what differentiates historians, chemists, or philosophers, and what unites them?

"I wanted faculty members to present glimpses of themselves as writers at work, as a way to answer these questions," Sommers said.

The lectures have been a great success.

"After hearing history professor Mark Kishlansky last fall, and Dudley Herschbach, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, last spring, I heard students say, 'I can't wait to go back and write!' After all, writing is the one activity that pulls us all together as a community of thinkers and scholars," Sommers said.

The lecture is free and open to the public.