This article reviews the results of a discipline-wide survey concerning lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and the transgendered in the discipline. We find that both research and teaching on LGBT topics have made some headway into the discipline, and that political scientists largely accept that LGBT issues can be fundamentally political and are worth…

My subject is the way Peter Bachrach addressed the question of poverty. But given that I was his student and research assistant and that I am a political scientist largely because of him, it is impossible to resist a few words about the experience of being in his classrooms. Peter was an inspiring teacher of politics. The substantive content of…

People often make choices that go against their own best interests. In the controversial bestseller "Nudge," Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein argue that people can benefit from simple "nudges" to improve their decision-making. In an upper-level undergraduate course on political decision-making, I created a series of assignments around "Nudge." In…

Popular music is ubiquitous in the lives of our students, music is used by politicians at virtually every one of their campaign events, and musicians are increasingly active in politics, but music has never been considered as a pedagogical tool in teaching political science classes. This article describes the use of music in an introduction to…

The traditional way of introducing comparative politics to freshmen, which is through the study of institutions, is contrasted with an alternative approach. An everyday-politics approach compares the daily struggles of global youth--how they cope in times of peace and war, and with issues of wealth and poverty, identity, education and employment,…

The challenges of teaching introductory-level U.S. politics to reluctant audiences are well known and widely lamented. This article investigates the pedagogical potential of political satire, specifically "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart", in engaging students in this tough-to-teach course. Based on a review of available literature and…

Dissemination of journal submission data is critical for identifying editorial bias, creating an informed scholarly marketplace, and critically mapping the contours of a discipline's scholarship. However, our survey and case study investigations indicate that nearly a decade after the Perestroika movement began, political science journals remain…

During my 45 years as an academic, I have followed the admonition sometimes attributed to the legendary Jedi warrior Obi-Wan Kenobe that political scientists should "use [their] power for good and not for evil." In this spirit, I have devoted substantial portions of my career to public service by providing strategic advice and campaign management…

In November 2007, I helped found a blog, "The Monkey Cage", with two of my colleagues, David Park and Lee Sigelman. This site joined a nascent political science blogosphere that is now composed of at least 80 blogs (Farrell and Sides 2010). The goals of "The Monkey Cage" are to publicize political science research and use this research to comment…

Weblogs (or blogs), as a form of communication on the Internet, have recently risen in prominence but may be poorly understood by both faculty and students. This article explains how blogs differ from other online communication tools and how political science faculty can make use of blogs in their classes. The focus is on using blogs as part of…

Addresses the question: How do the modern theories of international relations account for the origins of the Peloponnesian War? Creates an historical fiction of Athenians debating the war's origins. (CMK)

Provides background information on simulations and active learning. Discusses the use of simulations in political science courses. Describes a simulation exercise where students performed specific institutional role playing, simulating the workings of a single congressional issue network, based on the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act.…

Highlights the state government course at West Virginia University that leads students in a comparative study of state governments. Uses a natural progression of course topics from basic state-level characteristics, to political behavior, to political institutions, to policy in order to facilitate understanding of interstate political variation.…

Presents an outline for teaching about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the political science classroom. Explains that the course includes an overview and an examination of the key actors in the AIDS crisis, as well as analysis of the political and bureaucratic dimensions. Identifies subtopics and suggested and required readings. (SG)

Presents three short Internet assignments that can be used in an introductory undergraduate U.S. government course. Explains that the assignments foster students' understanding of political science concepts, political behavior, and government structures while also improving students' information seeking skills. Provides results from student…