Tuesday, 1 May 2007

Goin' down south

I am happy to report that I have accepted a visiting position for the 2007–08 academic year in the political science department at Tulane University in New Orleans. I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be teaching next year, but I know it involves an introduction to political science course and some additional mid-to-upper-level courses in American politics at the undergraduate level, which hopefully will include my seminar in Southern politics in the spring semester.

I’m particularly looking forward to living about nine degrees farther south. St. Louis may very well be a great place to live… but not between November and March, at least for this cold weather wimp.

The fun part of my semester

The best thing about teaching research methods is that I get to talk to students about all sorts of different research questions: everything from the relative effectiveness of economic and racial integration policies in public education to the incidence of split-ticket voting.

I’m almost looking forward to a semester (maybe even a year) of not teaching methods—if nothing else, it’d be good not to be pigeon-holed as the “methods guy” for a while. But I’ll miss the methods papers nonetheless.