Since achieving “PhD candidate” status, I’ve had the opportunity to deliver a few guest lectures about my work and related topics . There are no silver linings to the COVID-19 pandemic. But one common feature of pandemic-era academic practice that I hope persists is the ability to share ideas and conversation with students and scholars through remote presentations, without the personal, financial, and environmental costs of long-distance travel. I’ve found the occasional guest lecture a useful way to refine what I want to say about my dissertation research and the core concepts—among them, political order, mobilization, and violence—that animate it. These formats are also a useful home for writing that would otherwise stay on the proverbial cutting-room floor. For example, my research about the determinants of violence during the Kristallnacht pogrom has opened up a sizable historical literature about Jewish visibility during the Weimar period. Because only a fraction of my synthesis of this literature will end up in my article-length discussion of visibility during Kristallnacht, lecturing on the topic ensures that this writing finds another home.
I’ve posted two of these guest lectures to my new “teaching” page: one about the causes and consequences of civil war, and the other about mixed-methods approaches to pogrom research. With any luck, I’ll add selections of syllabi and lesson plans to the running lecture selection as my teaching career continues. In the meantime, I hope the collection of lectures becomes useful for educators teaching about comparative politics, international relations, and political violence. I encourage you to use them as you see fit, although I’d appreciate a heads-up at daniel.solomon18@gmail.com. I also encourage folks to reach out if you think that a discussion of my research about pogroms would align well with your course plans.
daniel solomon 