The Desert Has Everything: Episodes in Praise of Dryness.

This essay is constructed as a constellation of episodes composing a brief history of the Orientalist discourse focused on dryness as a condition of either ruin or inferiority. The deliberately fragmented narrative draws on sources such as Orientalist travel literature, historical events, popular culture, and findings from scientific journals to highlight how environmental imaginaries can be constructed and assembled differently, subsequently shaping problematic practices around the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]