My teaching is student-centered, emphasizing the development of critical thinking skills for life-long learning. I explicitly unpack “critical thinking” with students so that it becomes more than just a popular phrase. That is, from the start of a course, we analyze concept formation and the process of linking concepts together into arguments or propositions about the world – normative, descriptive, or causal. Thus, an emphasis on careful, self-conscious thinking develops skills of abstraction and theory building, skills I hope carry into not just the rest of the semester, but also other classes and other parts of life.
At the University of New Mexico, I taught multiple sections of “Introduction to Comparative Politics” (POLS 220) from 2005 to 2009, as well as an upper-division course, “Comparative Politics of Law and Courts” (POLS 320). I was also a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Political Science, the Department of Sociology, and the School of Law, including courses on Legislative Process, Police in Society, and International Legal Problems. Samples of recent syllabi are available below.
Intro to Comparative Politics
Syllabus (Spring 2009)
Comparative Law & Courts
Syllabus (Summer 2008)
Additional teaching interests include (in alphabetical order): comparative constitutional rights, democracy and development, human rights (including human rights litigation in international courts), judicial politics, Latin American politics, legal mobilization, police reform, research design, and social movements. I am particularly interested in courses at the intersection of comparative politics and public law, especially those with Latin American content. A course that I have proposed before but have not yet taught combines comparative politics and international law, introducing students to major concepts and arguments in both fields by analyzing real cases of litigation in international courts.