Teaching Curve 34 Jessica Auchter on Balancing Emotions and Learning Tools in IR Education

This month’s episode is with Dr. Jessica Auchter, Full Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Université Laval in Quebec, Canada. Jessica moved to her current role after 10 years teaching at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga in the United States. Her research is on visual culture and politics, including the visual representation of atrocity and corpses and human rights. She teaches courses on the visual representation of human rights, methodologies of visual analysis, gender, and humanitarianism. She teaches in English and in French. 

Our conversation explores 

§  Modeling for students how to navigate the intersections of really horrible human tragedies and the emotional burdens that thinking about and even studying those tragedies evoke. 

§  A tools-based mindset as perhaps the most lasting learning objective of international relations courses.

§  The politics of the language of instruction and how instructors can use those politics to open conversations that connect students to deeper learning. 

The interview was edited for length.
 

Teaching Curve contacts:

Twitter: @TeachingCurve

Email: TeachingCurve@isanet.org

For 23 more stories about innovative and effective teachers of international studies, check out Pedagogical Journeys through World Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030203047