University of Pittsburgh (BA)

In this course, we will dive deeply into public opinion. Our goal is to understand why people hold their political preferences, social identities, and, sometimes, uncivil attitudes toward those who they disagree with. As we get a grasp on the literature, we will move on to practical techniques–developing a survey, running it with a sample of American voters, and analyzing the results. In that process, students will be able to come up with their own questions and investigate whether their own theories explain political polarization in the United States.

In this introductory course of Comparative Politics, students will learn how domestic politics, political institutions (e.g., presidentialism vs. parliamentarism), and political behavior (e.g., identity and culture) operate and interact in different countries. Consider the cases of Hungary and Venezuela. While the two countries have followed completely different historical paths and are governed by parties from opposite ideological views, both have seen the profuse erosion of their democracy in the recent years. Why is it the case? In this course, students will learn how to recognize and interpret political events around the world (as the ones from Venezuela and Hungary) based on the relevant and widely used theories of the field.

During the Fall of 2019, I was the teaching assistant of Prof. Laura Paler. I taught weekly recitations to 100 students (split into four 25-student groups).