This month’s episode is with Dr. Jessica Auchter, Full Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Université Laval in Quebec, Canada. Jessica moved to her current role after 10 years teaching at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga in the United States. Her research is on visual culture and politics, including the visual representation of atrocity and corpses and human rights. She teaches courses on the visual representation of human rights, methodologies of visual analysis, gender, and humanitarianism. She teaches in English and in French.

Our conversation explores

§ Modeling for students how to navigate the intersections of really horrible human tragedies and the emotional burdens that thinking about and even studying those tragedies evoke.

§ A tools-based mindset as perhaps the most lasting learning objective of international relations courses.

§ The politics of the language of instruction and how instructors can use those politics to open conversations that connect students to deeper learning.

The interview was edited for length.

Teaching Curve contacts:

Twitter: @TeachingCurve

Email: TeachingCurve@isanet.org

For 23 more stories about innovative and effective teachers of international studies, check out Pedagogical Journeys through World Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030203047

This episode is with three scholar/teachers from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts in the US. Phi Su is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Williams. Liz Gallerani is Curator of Mellon Academic Programs at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), and Christine Ménard is Head of Research Services and Library Outreach for Williams College Libraries. The three have collaborated on the design, execution, and revision of two courses that earned Phi recognition as the recipient of ISA’s 2024 Deborah Gerner Award for Innovative Teaching.

Our conversation explores

• Course structures that get students to engage in ways that push them beyond memorization to imagination and creativity.
• The rich opportunities for pedagogical insight and collaboration that exist throughout institutions of higher learning, especially with staff members who often sit at the intersections of resources that can inspire creativity.
• And how pedagogical experimentation and pedagogical evolution feed each other in response to the natural feedback that students provide to our efforts.

The interview was edited for length.

Teaching Curve contacts:

Twitter: @TeachingCurve

Email: TeachingCurve@isanet.org

For 23 more stories about innovative and effective teachers of international studies, check out Pedagogical Journeys through World Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030203047

This month’s episode is with Dr. James Der Derian, Michael Hintze Chair of International Security Studies and Director of the Centre for International Security Studies, and Dr. Jayson Waters, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Centre for International Security Studies, which is part of the University of Sydney in Australia. They have been working together on the fundamentals of Quantum IR, which seeks to find connections between the quantum theory that explains the dynamics of subatomic particles and explanations of global political dynamics.

Our conversation explores

· Definitions of Quantum IR as a theoretical approach to global politics.

· Approaches to teaching Quantum IR to graduate students as an exercise in unlearning assumptions and authorizing innovative thinking.

· And the value of dialogical, flat, and mutually empowering pedagogical contexts in which everyone involved thinks of their interactions as resting on the power to make the future.

The interview was edited for length.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks to the steering committee for the International Studies Association’s Innovative Pedagogy Initiative, the folks at ISA HQ, and special thanks to Joel Lorenzatti, Sarah Dorr, and Josephine Anderson for logistical and technical support.

Teaching Curve contacts:

Twitter: @TeachingCurve

Email: TeachingCurve@isanet.org

For 23 more stories about innovative and effective teachers of international studies, check out Pedagogical Journeys through World Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030203047