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.