It’s no surprise that current events regularly lead us to update our syllabi. That doesn’t mean we can’t make “surprise” an important feature of our courses.
It’s no surprise that current events regularly lead us to update our syllabi. That doesn’t mean we can’t make “surprise” an important feature of our courses.
The first video ever played on MTV, back when MTV played music videos most of the time, was the one-hit wonder "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. A lament about how new technology ended...
With all of the focus on APSA, there’s been little discussion of another Labor Day ritual—the Revising of the Syllabus. In truth, I should have begun this ritual a few weeks ago. Now that the panic...
Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post settled on a theme for her extremely negative review of the new "The Lone Ranger" flick. Indeed, one might argue that developing a unifying thread is an important...
Sesame Street really has changed the way we think about our ABC's. My 2-year old is quite the fan, he's particularly into Ernie and Bert (though in our house, his Ernie has a special relationship with the teddy bear for some reason, not sure how Bert feels about that). Thanks to YouTube, we can spend a good half hour learning the ABC's. For your own entertainment, my current playlist:Elmo and India Arie do the alphabetSesame Street ABC’s Ray Charles and celebritiesTilly and the Wall sing the ABCsA very young Billy Joel does ABC’sKermit the Frog and Ladysmith Black Mambazo AlphabetLena Horne...
Not to remind everyone enjoying their holidays that Spring Semester is right around the corner, but I need to ask for help with my World Politics 101 syllabus. I'll be traveling on research early in the semester and need a film I can show one day while I'm away. At that point in the term, the only thing really appropriate will be a short film intended to excite students about global affairs, sort of a recruitment-into-the-major film on careers in global affairs, the way globalization affects us all, the value of a global outlook, that sort of thing. 50 minutes or less.I'm having a harder...
On the last day of class in "Rules of War," I ask my students what kinds of things are needed to strengthen the regime governing the conduct of war. They come up with all kinds of nifty ideas, and then I ask them what they'll personally do to move the world in that direction. For awhile they struggle to come up with anything more concrete than "raise awareness," but after awhile they will say things like, "run for office," or "join the State Department," or "go to work for Doctors Without Borders." They rarely say they'll join the military and work from within to uphold the spirit of the...
This weekend, I traveled to Washington with five of my "Global Agenda-Setting" students for their final exam. It consisted of an oral presentation of their collaboratively authored strategy paper at the headquarters of the NGO for whom the document was prepared, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. It was an extremely polished brilliant presentation, the culmination of an enormous amount of work, and I felt enormously tremendously proud watching it (and the CIVIC staffers' positive reactions). I also shared the students' relief that, after a month of late nights agonizing over...
Picked up my copy of International Studies Perspectives yesterday to discover Abigail Ruane and Patrick James' article "The International Relations of Middle Earth: Learning from The Lord of the Rings" leading the "Pedagogy and the Discipline" Section. Just another example of why ISP is my favorite IR journal. I read the article with gusto. The piece "overviews how J.R.R. Tolkien's acclaimed triology is relevant to learing about IR and then presents a number of 'cuts' into using LOTR to inform IR teaching of both problem solving and critical theory." These include relating IR's three "Great...