Teaching​
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Below are descriptions of the courses I teach. From among (and in preparation for) them, I've put together a list of recommended readings for folks interested in political theory and global politics. Check it out here. 

Introduction to Global Studies

What discourses connect or divide people? What actions inspire, disrupt, or come to define interactions among people and with nature? What processes shape patterns of human thought and action? Answers to these questions don’t necessarily affect everyone (and certainly don’t affect them in the same way) or the entire planet, but they cut across borders and do not solely involve state-to-state relations. The course surveys vantage points on complex social and political realities from various academic disciplines. By exploring identity formation, power relations, and how people make sense of the past to shape their contemporary daily lives, we will scrutinize the evolution and significance of political and cultural boundaries using a Global Studies lens.

Fascism and Its Discontents

What happens when the state asserts the power to define who belongs to a political community and who does not? How do political movements justify the suspension of laws, the consolidation of power, and the elimination of democratic norms in times of crisis? Indeed, how do they construct “crisis”? This course explores these and other questions through a critical study of key texts in political theory, focusing on the conceptual underpinnings of fascism and authoritarianism. The course engages with concepts such as sovereignty, the state of exception, and biopolitics and necropolitics (the politics of life and death), exploring how these ideas shape historical and contemporary political practice. Students will critically analyze the mechanisms of power and violence that underlie fascist and totalitarian regimes, while also considering how these ideologies persist and evolve in the contemporary world, especially in relation to race, gender, sexuality, aesthetics, modernity, colonialism, and the precariousness of life.

Identity and Global Politics

Since the nineteenth century, Eastern Europe has undergone one of the most breathtaking political and socioeconomic transformations. Imperial ambitions, contentious politics of fin de siècle European nationalisms, the destructiveness of both world wars, experiments with socialism, political revolutions, transitions to capitalist democracy, and European integration (re)shaped the lives of hundreds of millions of people across twenty countries. Moreover, the region continues influencing global politics, as a site of the major geopolitical contestation between the “West” and its challengers. Contextualized in regional history since 1848, and through immersive case study in contemporary Romania, this program explores a wide array of social, political, economic, and cultural processes across levels of analysis (i.e., local, national, regional, and global) and  foregrounds theoretical perspectives on meaning-making about “selves”.  In the context of contemporary Romanian society, students will engage with commonly circulating, socially salient identity framings (related to nationality, religion, ethnicity/race, class, sex/gender, sexual orientation, etc.) and consider how they take shape and evolve through social interaction.

Gender and Global Politics

This seminar examines the connections between (1) gender and sexuality and (2) global political processes, including armed conflict, violence, international security, global governance, transnational economics and development, global environmental politics, human rights, and activism/advocacy. Throughout the term we’ll put gender-inclusive approaches in direct conversation with genderless analyses of global processes, paying particular attention to cross-cutting themes of identity construction, intersectionality, vulnerability, resource distribution, and power relations.

​Capstone in Political Theory

What is power and what is its relationship to knowledge, governance, and practice? Is resistance against power possible, or does it always end up reinforcing the very system it fights against? How do institutions like schools, prisons, and hospitals function as mechanisms of discipline? This capstone seminar explores the nature, function, and diffusion of power through the works of Michel Foucault and other important thinkers. Engaging with key texts students will critically examine Foucault’s conceptions of disciplinary power, biopolitics, and governmentality. The course will also consider how these theories inform contemporary political structures, social institutions, and discourses of resistance. The seminar culminates in an independent research paper in which students will apply, critique, or extend Foucauldian concepts to a political or social phenomenon of their choice.

Capstone in Int'l Relations

This course delves into the historical and contemporary aspects of empires, examining how they shape political, economic, and cultural landscapes. Through a multidisciplinary approach—combining historical analysis, political theory, and literature—the course addresses themes such as imperial governance, resistance and decolonization, and the legacy of empire on daily life and contemporary thinking about geopolitical phenomena. Critical discussions may extend to the effects of imperialism on identity, the role of ideology and propaganda, and the effects of power on knowledge construction. By also exploring manifestations and challenges to Eurocentrism, this course reimagines key debates about cooperation and imperialism, governance and power, allocating resources and shaping consciousness, etc.

​Politics of Human Rights

Human rights have become a dominant normative discourse in contemporary global politics. They are invoked by world leaders justifying military or 'humanitarian' interventions and by local and indigenous social movements challenging their domination within existing systems of social relations. They are lauded as essential to human dignity and decried as tools of imperialism and neo-colonialism. They are tools of the oppressor and tools for the oppressed. How can we make sense of these seemingly contradictory uses and understandings of human rights? This course seeks to explain human rights as fundamentally contested political claims. It develops this perspective through attention to the real politics of human rights, surveying existing human rights law and institutions, examining several important contemporary human rights debates, and reflecting on the different tools that political and social science offer for making sense of these controversies. The emphasis is on helping students to acquire a critical understanding of human rights that they can use to assess contemporary events; students will work together on collaborative projects on issues of their own choosing to develop and apply their learning.

Int'l Law and Global Order

The first part of this course surveys the sources, institutions, and politics of public international law. The latter part of the course focuses in on historical manifestations of international criminal law related to mass atrocity crimes such as genocide, war crimes (i.e., attacking civilians, rape, and torture), and crimes against humanity (i.e., slavery and apartheid). Throughout the term, we’ll reflect on the stakes of defining actions and policies as “mass atrocity crimes,” the construction of popular and official discourses through which crimes and bystander actions are justified, the power and effects of international legal instruments, and the politics of pursuing justice through international tribunals or other legal mechanisms.

​Introduction to World Politics

This is an introductory course in world politics (historical and contemporary phenomena, events, practices, and processes that take place among global political entities) and International Relations (IR) (the dominant academic discipline through which we study world politics). Using a variety of analytical and methodological tools and theoretical frameworks developed by IR scholars, the course will examine five interrelated themes, including: (1) identity; (2) power relations; (3) order, institutions, and society; (4) cooperation and conflict; and (5) legitimacy. With readings on topics such as colonialism, lived experience during war, impacts of international organizations and law, ways of exercising state sovereignty, etc., the course is especially attentive to the centrality of race, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, and nationality to global interactions.