It’s hard to believe how quickly time passes. Javi is almost a month old now (and fussier by the day). The lack of sleep is starting to slowly wear me down. I still have two major projects (book manuscript, article rewrite) to finish—because in two weeks grading papers will take over my life.
We’re also experimenting w/ a one-parent household. I spent two nights interviewing last week, K8 does the same this week. So Tuesday through Thursday is my time alone w/ Javi. He’s already been to campus—on Tuesday he goes to his first college class. (Apologies to my students, but the lack of day care & other options made this necessary.)
Fortunately, my parents will be in town on Friday. This will be Javi’s first time meeting his abuelitos. Two weeks later, they go back to Bolivia.
Winter here has taken a turn. It doesn’t snow here as much as back in Michigan. But that means that it’s cold w/o the charm of icicles hanging from trees, snowball fights, or crisp blue mornings. Instead, it’s just cold, damp, and bleak grey skies. It’s only late January, and already I can’t wait for spring. But maybe it’s just because I’m ready to leave.
But I’m hoping to make my last semester at Dickinson my best one yet. Both Research Methods (POSC 239) & Introduction to Latin American Studies (LAST 201) are already looking to be fantastic.
In POSC 239, the students are pleased that we’re not only learning quantitative statistics. Instead, we’re discussing philosophy of science, the importance of qualitative methods, the history of the discipline (including behavioralism & post-behavioralism), research ethics, and a host of other issues. And alongside regression analysis, they’re also going to learn how to draw a representative sample for a small-N study, do ethnographic field observation, conduct unstructured “elite” interviews, and other techniques. I’m certainly looking forward to it.
I’ve already posted about how excited I am about LAST 201 (here). This is my first truly “multidisciplinary” course.
Integrated into the course, I’ve wrangled up a Latin American Studies spring speaker series. I’ll post about that more as it unfolds. But the speakers are: Joanne Rappaport (Georgetown), Talia Weltman (Duke), Mark Wasserman (Rutgers), Steve Striffler (U of Arkansas), Cynthia McClintock (GW), and Jeff Himpele (Princeton, formerly of NYU). Both Striffler (famous for his book on the United Fruit Company) & Himpele (whose book my students are reading) will come to class. McClintock is a giant in the field of Andean politics whose work I greatly respect & admire (and she’s a former LASA president). So I’m excited about this. I don’t think LAS has ever had a speaker series at Dickinson.
I’ll be honest in admitting that I’m a little nervous about my third course: Latin American Government & Politics (POSC 251). I’m teaching the course this semester strictly as a “political science” course, not as an “area studies” course. We’re using Peter Smith’s Democracy in Latin America. It’s an excellent book, but it’s more advanced than the more typical Skidmore & Smith Modern Latin America. I’ve noticed that many such courses are really just regional history courses, w/ an emphasis on political developments. I’m hoping to make this a comparative politics course, w/ an emphasis on 20th century Latin America. In the second half of the semester, they’ll get to read about more in-depth books about Brazil, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. We’ll see how that goes.
