Teaching

"Government & Politics of Africa" (INTA 3240/8803)

Terms: Fall 2025

This course explores governance and politics in African societies from the late pre-colonial period to the present. Students will learn about topics including traditional governance, the slave trades, colonial regimes and resistance to colonialism, clientelism, personalism, state decay, ethnic politics, democratization, election violence, civil war, international immigration, and more. Literary fiction, including both novels and short stories, will serve as case studies through which students encounter real political trends and affairs. 

"Introduction to Global Development" (INTA 2050)

Terms: Fall 2024, Spring 2025

This course provides a basic orientation within the field of global development studies. It is divided into three main parts. First, students explore different approaches to conceptualizing and measuring development, learning about the strength and weaknesses of these approaches. Next, students learn about major causes of underdevelopment and how they relate to one another. Finally, students review both contemporary and historical proposed solutions to underdevelopment, including theoretical motivation for these solutions and evidence regarding their efficacy. Throughout the course, students develop critical thinking skills as they learn about how social scientists conduct research and weigh evidence. Students also apply the generalized knowledge from the course to a specific country, completing case study assignments throughout the course. 

"African Politics through Novels and Short Stories" (POL SCI 169)

Terms: Summer 2020, Summer 2021

This course teaches African politics by pairing literary fiction with contemporary political science research. Students usually encounter African politics in abstract or clinical terms, an approach that inadvertently reinforces overgeneralizations, stereotyping, and dehumanization. Through literary fiction, students encounter concrete, realistic African individuals and characters who humanize African experiences and challenge their expectations. I use a pedagogical strategy called affective curation, or strategic organization of course content “to trigger a range of unexpected and perhaps difficult emotional responses” that students subsequently explore through course discussion and assignments.*  Students come to understand that politics are neither distant nor abstract; critically, they also perceive African citizens – whether fictive characters or very real authors – as active agents in their own political experiences. 

*Ramzi Fawaz, “How to Make a Queer Scene, or Notes toward a Practice of Affective Curation,” Feminist Studies 42, no. 3 (2016): 757–68, https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.42.3.0757.

Average Instructor Evaluation Score: 8.91/9 (n=23)

"Introduction to Data Analysis" (POL SCI 6)

Terms: Summer 2022

This course teaches informed consumption and responsible and transparent production of basic statistical analyses. Students learn to identify when scientists go from description (what the data says directly) to inference (what the data suggests when we add some assumptions). We explore these distinctions through examples from historical and contemporary social science research. In addition, students also learn to create basic summary statistics, data visualizations, and statistical models in R.

Average Instructor Evaluation Score: 9/9 (n=17)

"Social Statistics of the Sixties" (CLUS 60W)

Terms: Spring 2023

This seminar is very similar to the "Introduction to Data Analysis" course above. However, the small seminar structure allows students apply these skills by independently producing data analysis projects exploring 1968 ANES data. Students posit a research hypothesis and design an appropriate methodological approach to test that hypothesis. Projects are workshopped among peers and written up in reports mimicking the format of academic journal articles.

Average Instructor Evaluation Score: 4.93/5 (n=14)