Title: Ph.D., Assistant Professor
College/Department: College of Arts & Sciences, Department of Political Science
Course: POLS 090, Big Questions Seminar: Pop Culture and Politics?
Student Enrollment: 20
Proposal: What Can Pop Culture Teach us About Politics? is a Big Questions Seminar for first year students. The course is designed to introduce students to the field of political science, but also to introduce them to college life at Lehigh more generally. Each week, we study a mix of texts that includes at least one popular movie and at least one scholarly article. When I taught this course for the first time in Fall 2024, there were three major assignments: a 5 page midterm paper, a 5-10 page final paper, and a presentation of the final paper. The final paper was scaffolded with preliminary “checkpoint” assignments including a thesis statement, an annotated bibliography, and an outline. I found that the students’ degree of preparation for college-level writing varied considerably. Some students were comfortable crafting nuanced arguments developed over 10 pages. Others were unfamiliar with the classic structure of a five-paragraph persuasive essay. In this faculty fellowship, I am hoping to increase the amount of writing accomplished by students in this course. In particular, I want to increase the number of opportunities students have to write and edit rough drafts. I would like to develop this course so that it can exemplify Lehigh’s commitment to writing across the curriculum.
CITL/I&O Collaborators: Justin Greenlee