IR Misc

May 28

Why Army women are demanding the right to fight — die — in combat | WaPo -

Haring, a mother of three who has spent 28 years in the Army and Reserve, has everything to lose if she were allowed to serve on the front lines. But she argues that it’s only fair that women get to choose to go into combat, no matter what their other roles in life are. Protecting women from combat is the same as saying men are expendable. And women are willing to accept greater risks to reap the greater opportunities that come with those risks, she said.

I should add that women also deserve the opportunity to evade the draft and register as conscientious objectors.

At West Point, Asking if a War Doctrine Was Worth It | NYT

May 23

I Didn't Know There Were Cities in Africa! | Teaching Tolerance

May 21

New UD class for Fall 2012

WOMS 604 Advanced Feminist Theory: The Theory of Women’s and Gender Studies
Margaret Stetz
This course will examine the rise of both Women’s Studies and Gender Studies as interdisciplinary academic fields. It will explore their philosophical links to feminist theory, as well as their political connections to activist movements focused on race, sexuality, and class. The latter part of the course will consider the history of these areas of study at the University of Delaware and their increasing connections to Material Culture Studies. Among the writers we will read will be Virginia Woolf, Judith Butler, Gloria Anzaldua, “bell hooks,” and Michael Kimmel. The aim throughout will be to prepare graduate students—whether they do or don’t have a background in these matters—to teach issues related to gender in undergraduate courses and to use feminist perspectives in their own research and writing, within their chosen disciplines. This seminar may be taken either as a stand-alone course or as part of the new graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30-4:45pm

May 16

Why Historians Never Trust Their “Sources” | The Edge of the American West -

Why did no one tell me this story when I visited the Pentagon?!

May 14

Twitter is (mostly) a meritocracy. Academia (mostly) isn’t. | More or Less Bunk -

Success in academia depends upon whether a market exists for your services. I studied labor history in graduate school oh so many years ago. The year I got my current job, there were a grand total of two ads that even mentioned that specialty as part of the job description. I was very fortunate to get one of those jobs. However, had I studied something else, I would have had a lot more places to apply.

This seems self-evident to me now, but I really wish somebody had told me that while I was still in graduate school. You can be the best job applicant ever, but if you studied in a field where nobody’s hiring your merit won’t help you a bit. Likewise, if you’re applying for a job at a teaching institution and nobody taught you how to teach, that institution isn’t going to be willing to take a chance that you can learn when there’s an experienced teacher applying for the same job (and there almost certainly is in this day and age).

May 09

Coping in Grad School

Advice from Peg Boyle Single, author of Demystifying Dissertation Writing

GradHacker

ProfHacker

PhinisheD

Piled Higher and Deeper (Ph.D. Comics)

May 07

Barbara Robbins: A slain CIA secretary’s life and death | WaPo

May 04

Shameless self-promotion

Please vote for my picture so that I can win a free trip to PL. People who sign up at the Lufthansa site can vote once per day.

Making Pierogi in PL


Vote early, vote often, and tell your friends!

May 02

Academia Becomes Occupied With Occupy Movement | NYT

Apr 09

Special Issue on Narrative Analysis -

Sexuality Research and Social Policy, Volume 8, Number 4

Mar 29

Polish Ex-Official Charged With Aiding C.I.A. | NYT

Mar 26

Bystander Training and Other Acts of Management | Easily Distracted -

Inside the curriculum, my first and last commitment as an academic is to create a safe space for unsafe thoughts, to explore different sides of difficult issues, to let heresies and orthodoxies walk hand in hand, to open up conversations wherever possible, to problematize and perturb. And to try, however I can, to make room at the table for all sorts of identities, all sorts of ways of seeing and being, while trying to make sure that everyone has to deal with their share of challenges and doubts.

2012 Call for Papers Posted - International Studies Association-Northeast

Mar 22

New counterterrorism guidelines permit data on U.S. citizens to be held longer | WaPo