My approach to instruction has been profoundly shaped by my training in, and fierce attachment to, geography as a discipline of study and as an approach to learning.

First and foremost, geography enables me to convey a sense of the internationalization of societies and social life. This perspective naturally compels an instructor to create courses that are interdisciplinary, comparative, global, and multicultural. I encourage an intellectual dissonance that leads students to examine their own society and to challenge their own assumptions about it. Classroom instruction should enable students to put themselves in a position where they can question what they assume to be "natural" or taken-for-granted.

Second, I actively encourage students to take interdisciplinary study very seriously; I point to the artificiality of conventional academic boundaries. Any critical understanding of the world entails coming to terms with the way we think, and how knowledge is structured, as much as grasping the "real-world" complexity of existing societies.

Third, I endeavor to make courses problem-oriented as well as theory-focused in a narrow sense. By identifying one concrete issue, the class can sketch the outlines of three or four quite sophisticated theories, each of which purports to explain the problem in a quite radically different way. This affords one an entry point into the knotty questions of the assumptions and premises upon which each explanation rests.

The Italian intellectual Gramsci distilled, it seems to me, the very essence of what a critical education should be, and provides a sort of leitmotif for my teaching:

The starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and of "knowing thyself" as a product of the historical process to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces without leaving an inventory. It is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory.

What do these grandiose claims look like in the classroom? Honesty, flexibility, a sensitivity to the audience, and a deep belief in the virtue of what one teaches are all certainly central to good teaching. But my own teaching practice is rarely stable: the constant experimentation with content and practice reflects to some degree the enormous challenges of large lecture classes. Some general approaches, however, have been quite helpful. The first is to recognize that part of good teaching is good theater and hence about performance. Second, while it is important to be enthusiastic and energetic about one's subject matter, it is equally critical to inject the personal (and perhaps the fallible?) and anecdotal into instruction, because it facilitates active student engagement. Finally, student research and feedback are essential, because learning must be a very active and dialogic process.

A final point with regard to my own teaching philosophy is the desire to encourage students to shape their own educational trajectory. One of the great rewards of teaching is to not only be party to intellectual growth and creativity but to see students actively take charge of their educational development, to self-consciously seek out specific ideas, theories, and concepts, and to grapple with the inordinately complex process of how we learn.