Students working on concept maps in PS 461: Economic Inequality in Modern Political Thought.

Teaching Interests and Experience
Two main goals drive all my teaching endeavors: I strive to help my students learn how to think critically and how to communicate effectively. Teaching students to be cautiously skeptical goes against the grain, but the independent and careful analysis of information it inspires can be immensely rewarding. I think it is critical to help students develop their ability to clearly communicate their thoughts through challenging discussion or written work, as our collective attention has become more scarce. To put it differently, the benefits of analytic and communicative skills diffuse widely: they are necessary not only for grappling with primary texts in political theory or for writing good seminar papers, but for understanding contemporary moral and political problems and facilitating democratic participation. I believe these goals are best achieved through student engagement, good deliberation and discussion, a multi-method learning approach, and skills extension.

At UW-Madison, I teach courses on Economic Inequality and Modern Political Thought, the History of American Political Thought, and the large Introduction to Political Theory lecture, as well as a number of seminars on modern and contemporary political thought at the graduate level. A copy of my teaching statement, as well as any of my syllabi, are available upon request. 

I was a Fellow in the Mu Cohort in  MTLE (Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence) program at UW-Madison. 

In 2019-2020, I was an Excel Initiative fellow at UW-Madison, 

Student Feedback
A summary of my student feedback is available upon request.