Looking back on WWI in Real Time

After a few weeks of reflection following a semester of teaching World War I in Real Time—which, by the way, was insanely fun—I figured that a few broader observations about the course, as opposed to the war itself, were in order. It was, after all, a unique experience for me as a teacher.

1. The topic itself [just part of one war? in real time? what was I thinking?] might’ve seemed narrow, but the sheer breadth of theories of politics we covered was actually pretty remarkable; the war was overflowing with puzzles to be solved. Collective action, bargaining and war (several variants thereof), coordination problems, coalition- and alliance-building, international law, state-society bargaining, war expansion and duration…the list went on. And I think that the history of a single event provided a sufficiently common substantive vocabulary in the room that teaching a wider range of theories was *easier* than it would’ve otherwise been.

2. At the same time, it’s always a bit staggering that we can use so few strategic problems to explain or gain insight into so many questions about politics.

3. Also, the right draw of students can do a lot for the quality of the course.

4. Blogging a course wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected, but it’s surely a grind. Still, whether I wrote the posts right before a lecture or right after, I found that I almost always got something out of it. Teaching two grad courses this spring, I’m not sure just how much of the same style of blogging I’ll be doing, but I do hope that I can keep up the habit.

5. I firmed up some ideas about what it looks like when I’m at my best in the classroom, largely because (a) the blogging forced me to put some structure to lectures I otherwise might not have and (b) I was seeking out a new question to ask, a new puzzle to solve, in class nearly every week. It even carried over to the other course I was teaching at the same time.

Of course, there’s still one question left to ask: would I teach this course again? Absolutely. In fact, it’s in the queue for Fall 2015. Sure, it’ll look a bit different, and maybe only the last third will be straight-up fall 1915 events “in real time,” *but* the selection of material from 1914 that opens the course will be pretty lean and pretty damned mean. (Of course, holding on to the best of that set of lectures will also cut down on new stuff to prep—and that’s tough to complain about.)

Until then, we’ll see just how reliable I can be about blogging the teaching of a grad course on Research in International Relations…

blogging in service of teaching…and vice versa

I am, at best, an inconsistent blogger. That’s not shocking, I’m sure.

However, as rarely as I manage to post something, I do find that I generally enjoy the exercise, so this semester I’m going to implement try to do something new: I’m going to write about my undergraduate lectures—sometimes before class, sometimes after—but in either case see if I can’t bring some unity of purpose to each lecture and relate the content to broader issues of political science that I might not necessarily touch on in “War and Peace in East Asia” (which, I should clarify, is the name of the course).

War and peace, obviously, aren’t new topics for me, but the regional focus certainly is. Preparing over the summer has pushed me towards a better understanding of a number of wars and near-wars about which my knowledge was, heretofore, criminally limited (e.g., yesterday I refreshed myself on the Russo-Japanese War), and I’m very much looking forward to (a) the intellectual exercise of applying familiar theory to new cases, which usually (fingers crossed) leads to new research questions, and (b) not subjecting those around me to endless recitations of the new things I’ve learned about World War I. (Sorry about that, everyone.)

So, with all that’s implied by such a public commitment, classes begin at UT on August 28. Keep an eye on this space.