Undergraduate Teaching and Supervision

I regularly teach undergraduate classes on Comparative Politics, Non-Democracies, Middle East Politics, and Political Islam. You can see a brief summary of each below, and more detail in the course catalog.

Comparative Politics (POLI SCI 120): This lecture class provides a broad overview of the field of comparative politics, introducing students to major theories and concepts such as research design and methodology, the state, identity, democracy and authoritarianism, political violence, economic development, and identity.

Non-Democracies (POLI SCI 339): This upper division lecture/seminar hybrid provides a political science-based overview of non-democratic regimes, focusing on their key features, resilience, breakdown, and legacies. We will use a wide array of historical and contemporary examples to study the phenomenon.

Middle East Politics (POLI SCI 320): This lecture class provides an introduction to major political science theories relating to state building, identity, democracy and authoritarianism, economic development, and social movements by studying cases in the historic and contemporary Middle East.

Islam and Politics (POLI SCI 370): This upper division lecture/seminar hybrid uses political science theories relating to religion and politics, political violence, social mobilization and protest, and electoral behavior to understand many of the major Islamist movements of the 20th century.

Senior Honors Thesis: I am also available to supervise senior honors theses in political science. If you are interested, please contact me directly to discuss your project.

Graduate Teaching and Doctoral Supervision

Religion and Politics (PS850): This graduate seminar introduces students to the major theoretical approaches and debates in political science, as well as in cognate disciplines such as sociology and economics, relating to religion and politics. In addition to acquainting students with these substantive questions, we will also touch on issues related to conceptualization, measurement, and research methods.

Doctoral Supervision: I enjoy working with doctoral students whose work intersects with mine, particularly in the fields of religion and politics, Middle East politics, authoritarianism and democracy, and political violence. I am particularly interested in dissertation projects with the potential to combine multiple methods. If you would like to hear me discuss the Ph.D. application process in a little more depth, see this short talk I prepared for POMEPS a few years ago.

I currently supervise four Ph.D. students:

Noor Hamwy is a third-year PhD student studying political violence. Her research examines when and why intercommunal violence against minorities occurs, with an empirical focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Her work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, the Sharon Abramson Research Grant for Holocaust Studies at Northwestern University, and the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Oliver Lang is a sixth-year PhD candidate studying the production and consumption of propaganda under dictatorship. His research explains when and why propaganda entrenches authoritarian rule around the world, with a regional focus on the MENA region and Europe.

Jeremie Langlois is a fifth-year studying how changes in the spatial organization of state authority and public goods distribution shape incentives for political participation. He is an alum of the CASA II program, and his dissertation research has been supported by the NSF’s APSA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG), the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), the Institute for Humane Studies, the Rapoport Family Foundation, and several competitive internal awards from UW-Madison.

Marika Olijar is a fifth-year PhD candidate specializing in religion and politics and regime maintenance, with regional expertise in post-Soviet Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Her research has been funded by Title VIII, Title VI, the Rapoport Foundation, APSA, and UW-Madison’s area studies center, CREECA.