Teaching

My primary teaching responsibilities at the moment are comprised of International Political Economy and European Politics, including politics of the European Union. I’ve been fortunate to teach in a number of different settings beyond the traditional university classroom, including study abroad programs in Segovia, Spain, Monterrey, Mexico, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. In the coming years, I also will teach courses on non-proliferation and on the illicit political economy. All of my classes tend to be oriented around questions of governance: how, why, and for whom we govern a given political issue or space.

I maintain very high standards for student performance but also try hard to ensure that I’m available as I can be to help them meet that standard. In all of my classes, my goal is to help students master, first, the core information that they need about the subject at hand and, second, the analytical tools that help them answer the “why” kinds of questions about the world around them. My favorite compliment from students is some form of: “That was the hardest class I’ve had, but I learned more than in any other class.” Another favorite: “I’ve never been so proud of a C before.” That’s the balance that I strive for.

More broadly, the most important challenge that many students face today is understanding how to sift through the “haystack” of information available to them in order to find the needle of information that they need. My primary aim in teaching is to help students develop the baseline knowledge and advanced analytical tools they need to do that more effectively.

Finally, while my typical delivery is fairly traditional–I still think it’s amazing what a chalkboard and well-led discussion can do–I do try to mix in other activities. At this link you’ll find an article that describes and analyzes a simulation that Gabriele Suder, a former graduate student, Abby Hall, and I developed in order to teach the politics of trade and trade agreements to an international, multidisciplinary group of students. A bibliography and a mock news release that we used for that are available below.  You’re welcome to use them as you please.  I also run a smaller scale simulation to teach the structure of parliamentary democracy and the logic of principal-agent analysis. And perhaps my favorite tool is using Mickey Mouse to teach Marx. If you’d like any details on any of those ideas, don’t hesitate to contact me.

 

The bibliography (arranged by date) and mock news release for the trade negotiation simulation described in Nance, Suder, & Hall (2016) is available at the following links: Mock News Article; Combined Sources By Date Bibliography 1.