My Modern African Politics class this fall semester had only four students, and I think one of the students was "incentivized" to be there so that the class didn't get canceled. I figured that instead of doing my same old scaffolded research project, we could try something a little different

The students and I agreed at the beginning of the semester that they would all commit to working hard and no free-riding. In return, they would help design the final group project, and we could do activities together that larger classes couldn’t. After discussion, the class decided to write a blog on the politics of food in Africa, a topic that encompasses many class themes like identity and statehood, colonialism, international debt, foreign investment, agriculture, the environment, migration, hunger, and globalization.

The result: The Politics of Food in Africa
What's even better than that? We took two informal field trips to Washington, DC, to sample Senegalese and Ethiopian cuisines. Yum!

(This post was originally posted at "The Gender and War Project")

Initiated in the year 2000, the UN Security Council’s Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda calls for women’s participation in security governance and protection of women from security threats around the world. Despite its grand plans, the agenda’s implementation has been spotty, with greater attention to women’s participation in security solutions than to the structures of violence that have threatened them.

Furthermore, though the WPS agenda was initially driven by women’s organizations around the world and its intent acclaimed by many more, the UN Security Council resolutions and other policy documents that comprise the agenda do not always reflect the needs of the women who are the object of these policies, particularly women in the Global South. Instead, international discourses about women in the Global South stereotype them and reify them simultaneously as passive victims and as inherently peaceful. This characterization positions women solely as targets of the WPS policies rather than as powerful actors in their own right.

In a 2017 article in Global Affairs, “Pragmatic scepticism in implementing the Women, Peace, and Security agenda,” I outline two ways in which women and their work in local women’s security and peacebuilding organizations challenge international discourses at the same time that they reclaim them for their needs. This challenging is the “pragmatic scepticism” of the title – a way for women to be wary about certain essentializing stories told about them while simultaneously realizing that some stories can be useful as forms of organization and fundraising. Drawing on interview and participant observation research conducted among local women’s security and peacebuilding organizations in Côte dʼIvoire in 2014–2015, this article identifies two such stories that frame women’s activism around their own security: vulnerability and motherhood.

Vulnerability as a strength

Discourses around wartime sexualized violence tend to create binaries between victims and saviors, between the vulnerable and the strong. This has been echoed in the WPS agenda, which was not designed to reduce vulnerability by fundamentally remaking the system of gender relations. And though the first resolution of the WPS agenda, 1325, incorporated perspectives of anti-militarism, later resolutions and other aspects of the policy agenda have comprised this intent. Instead, the WPS agenda now highlights women’s vulnerability, and its programs are intended deal with, not question this vulnerability.
Many women in Côte dʼIvoire expressed frustration about how their day-to-day peacebuilding work was overlooked by the WPS agenda, which emphasizes external interventions rather than support of pre-existing grassroots organizations. Côte dʼIvoire, in fact, has a long history of women’s peace activism, during both the colonial period and more recent civil conflicts.

These women did acknowledge that they were vulnerable to particular forms of violence in conflict and in their daily lives – economic, political, and physical. However, they did not want this vulnerability to define them; they did not want a sense of victimhood to permeate women in the country. They reconfigured the vulnerability from being based on fear to being a place of strength from which they can organize.

Photo courtesy of Organization of Active Women in Côte dʼIvoire (OFACI)

As part of my research, I attended trainings run by local women’s peacebuilding organizations that had the goal of teaching women about their rights or empowerment opportunities. I watched the trainings shift from the morning’s formality to a relaxed camaraderie in the afternoon. Women told stories about their experiences of vulnerability and used that vulnerability to develop a solidarity on which, the training leaders hoped, they could build peace in their communities going forward. In the words of one participant, “Women need to help women because it is only us who know what each other is experiencing.”

But vulnerability can be used instrumentally by these women’s organizations, as well. These organizations use the language of vulnerability stemming from sexualized violence in the WPS resolutions to ask for increased funding for their work. Vulnerability is a pathway to access funding for some of these organizations, and women allow themselves to be vulnerable to establish their credentials as at-risk and open to the intervention of the international community.

Motherhood as an identity

Another frame produced by international discourses that women in Côte d’Ivoire adapt and work from is motherhood. This identity is often collapsed with ideas of vulnerability because of women’s specific health needs and mother-only caring responsibilities for very young children. African feminists like Catherine Acholonu and Obioma Nnaemeka note that motherhood in many African societies is not just a biological role but also a social one. Even if a woman does not have children, familial roles such as “sister” or “aunt” are liberally given and come with nurturing duties.

Motherhood, then, is not only taken on by those who have birthed and raised children but is claimed by a majority of women in Côte dʼIvoire and is naturalized for all women. As with vulnerability, women are pragmatic about their mothering roles, noting that there are specific ways they can work with their identity as a mother, but also instrumental ways to sell motherhood as necessary to security.

At the core of the activism by the local women’s organizations was a commitment to security, peace, and anti-violence. In particular, it was the attachment to their children through birth and caretaking that provided women power in their communities and compelled them to act publicly. Especially for poor women, who have little formal power or access to resources, motherhood provides them with the capacity to act. The director of one women’s organization passionately claimed, “A woman, child, there is not a more horrible pain than giving birth. Do you think she can give birth to her child and then let her child die like this? Maybe he’s going to die because you can do nothing. If you can do something, you will snatch your child from death.”

Just as with the frame of vulnerability, women used motherhood instrumentally to attract attention and funding to their cause of peace and security. Women’s organizations often premised their programs on women’s roles in their families and their communities. Conflict management programs, in particular, relied on women’s domestic management and intimate knowledge of their families. Local justice officials sometimes depend on women to report if their adolescent sons or husbands are coming and going from the house at odd hours, if there are weapons or large amounts of cash in the house, and if there are new people in the community.

Implications of reclaiming the discourses

My goal is not to reify women in Africa and specifically in Côte d’Ivoire as motherly or “natural” but to note and understand their experiences in their work, as they operate in their own contexts, both as vulnerable and as actors in conflict and post-conflict. Because the WPS resolutions are based on assumptions of women, allowing Ivorian women to the space to push back against these assumptions can help them redefine security for themselves, through their own advocacy. Only by listening to African women can we open up space for their voices and analyze their words and actions vis-à-vis state structures and international discourses.

I saw this on Twitter. I'm NOT posting it as a New Year's resolution but as a lesson learned from my first semester on the tenure track.

I love my job. I mean, it's a job, but I really like it. Basically, I think I've finally landed at a place that suits me well. I've been working on this kindness to other people for a couple years now, after a nasty run-in with a fellow researcher in Abidjan (buy me two beers to hear the story). But the kindness to myself is a bit more difficult – and I'm not talking about the "self care" that is all the rage, whether in its original definition or in its subsumation under capitalism.

No, this is about self-care as part of my job. The first year on the tenure track, Washington College protects its faculty from service to the college. So I'm not on any campus-wide committees and am not tapped to do anything important until I figure out where most of the buildings are. (Goal: find out where "The Egg" is.) Instead, first-year faculty are expected to teach their little hineys off, learn the ropes, and plan out the next few years.

All great. But I began pressuring myself to do the very best at teaching. If this was really my only job, especially that first semester, I needed to be so good and create such amazing, engaging lectures and projects and readings. I'm not a pollyanna and so could recognize that student success was partially on the students, but I would get frustrated when they seemed bored or confused. I wanted to know what was wrong with me that I couldn't get everything perfect.

What I finally learned was that I was new. Just like it took me a while to figure out what a dissertation was so that I could write one. Like learning a new skill. Some things in the classroom, I'm good at. Some things, I'm still figuring out. And this is being kind to myself. Not taking setbacks personally. Learning from other professors but not letting them overwhelm me with "you know what you should do ...". Allowing myself to be a bit of a beginner.

I'll get the hang of it. I don't have to incorporate every innovative teaching technique this semester. I can do a couple, and once I master those, I can work another one or two in. A skill, not a gift.

Like last year, I spent a few weeks jumping around a few places in Europe for conferences/workshops and a little bit of holiday. This time, I was in the Netherlands for work, Finland for a holiday with a dear friend, and Switzerland for work. It was an exhausting trip that coincided with midsummer in the Nordic countries, so my final overnight layover in Stockholm meant that most everything was closed.
 
One of my favorite things about traveling in general is when places are so fully realized versions of what they are. Almost fulfilling their stereotypes, but in a charming way rather than catering to tourists.
 
Utrecht, Netherlands, was one such place, as were Helsinki and Turku (and the archipelago) in Finland. Partially because the weather was so sunny and warm, which meant that everyone was eating and drinking at outdoor cafes with the late sunsets, but largely because the cities took pride in themselves and in their distinct culture and heritage.
 
While I also spent a short time in Zurich and Vienna (the visit to Geneva was not my first) and would of course return to explore more, they didn’t charm me as much as Utrecht, Helsinki, and Turku.

The end of a semester, a year, a job. At the end of this month, I’ll be done with my visiting position at Pomona College.
 
As I’ve written before, teaching is fun but tiring – like putting on a performance. I also felt that I had to be an expert of everything, like taking a quiz every day. My intro to IR class this spring was so dynamic and curious, but that meant that I always had to be on. Nuclear physics one day, immigration law the next.
 
The Claremont Colleges have a great Center for Teaching and Learning, where I took advantage of a book club, a diversity discussion group, and a few other workshops. These were potentially my favorite part of the job – learning from novice and experienced professors from all kinds of disciplines how they deal with some of the classroom challenges that I thought only I had.
 
I had been worried throughout the fall semester, my first time teaching full-time, that injecting too much of my personality and particularly my motivations behind my political stances and teaching style would be inappropriate. But I realized (with the help of the reading group) that not only do students want to know their instructors’ feelings, my own teaching motivation is much stronger when I am a professional version of myself.
 
A quick version of this: in intro to IR, we were covering international security and shifts in weapons types and technologies after the end of the Cold War. This is not something I know well, and in fact, I am ethically opposed to the creation and use of weapons for national security purposes. Instead of declaring this to my class, however, I showed footage from the 1992 Gulf War, which was really the first time that video had been a part of the weapons themselves, broadcast immediately, and shown on television. I was in middle school at the time, and I believe that watching missiles, through the eyes of the missile itself, guide itself down a chimney and to other exact targets shocked me so much that it shaped my core beliefs and most likely my career.
 
I showed a few of these videos to my class and explained about how these weapons changed how modern war is fought, as well as how they have changed how Americans understand our own foreign policy. We also talked about how shocking these videos were at the time and how they still are, now that there are few images from guided missiles shown to the public any longer. Showing the class my own history and identity as it came out of a political event I think was one of the most effective lessons I’ve learned myself this year.

Well, that’s a thing. A terrible, terrible thing. Everyone tells you how terrible it is, and you think you know, but you don’t know.
 
First, the numbers: This was my second year on the political science/international studies job market, and total, I applied to probably 100 positions overall (including postdocs), had eight or ten phone or skype interviews (including the one for my current visiting position at Pomona College), three campus interviews, and one job offer.
 
Now, I only know what it’s like for me, but when people say fit is important, they are so right, at least for those of us from non-elite institutions. Especially for me, researching a non-mainstream topic with a non-mainstream methodology, even though I applied to general IR positions, I probably didn’t get a second look from most of those hiring committees.
 
What I did get was a job, doing exactly what I want to do. Starting July 1, I’ll be an assistant professor of political science and international studies at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. It’s a liberal arts college with a cool history and is in an area I’m looking forward to moving back to. I even get to teach things I’m really excited about, like African politics, gender and conflict, and even IPE (as long as I can give it a development focus). And I’m certain I got this job on fit. Not only did I fit their requirements and they fit mine, but there’s a general sense of fitting in with the culture of the place and the personalities of the other faculty.
 
It’s a joy right now to be done with the dissertation and feeling secure that I should have employment for the next few years. I feel extremely fortunate that the right thing came up at the right time for me – it isn’t the case for a lot of people in my position – so I’m trying to honor it by working smart and hard.

Because so much stuff has happened in the past year and the only time I’ve had to reflect on it all is during my 2-plus-hour-a-day commute or just before I’m falling asleep, I’ve decided to write and backdate some posts that I didn’t get a chance to write before. So here’s the first: a contemplation of my first semester of full-time teaching.
 
As I wrote over the summer, I enjoyed teaching more than I thought I would, not least because I kept learning things. But even though everyone tells you how hard the first year of teaching is and says that you should really finish your dissertation before you start, you don’t really absorb that lesson.

Heed my warning.
 
It wasn’t even so much the teaching – I taught three classes this fall, two undergraduate at my VAP position at Pomona College and one masters-level at Chapman University as an adjunct. They were all brand-new preps, and I particularly underestimated the students at Pomona, who are exceptionally well-prepared for college and expected a great deal out of me. When I knew the material really well, I was relaxed and things were fine. On other subjects, I was intimidated, which showed in my teaching. Overall, the students were great and generally kind to me, but I do feel pretty bad for them. Sorry, guys!
 
What I didn’t expect was how the last few months of dissertation writing, editing, and defending are all-consuming. I’ll go into this process in a later post, but my mind had next-to-zero space for anything else, including a bit of creativity in teaching. It was all I could do to write a lecture and ask questions in class.
 
Additionally, I was on the job market for the second time this fall (again, a later post), which was, of course, a bit smoother than last year, but my stress was still high while teaching and dissertating and driving.
 
The best thing about teaching this fall was that I couldn’t think about anything else during class. So even though teaching was stressful, I had to focus on it and not dwell on anxiety about my dissertation or the job market.
 
I guess I owe my students a giant thank you in addition to the apology!

Thank heavens.

Defended a couple of weeks ago, did some revisions, submitted the paperwork on Friday. What a relief.

As a follow up to a workshop on feminist global “secureconomy,” I wrote a post on the Progress in Political Economy blog about the limits of expertise. Why not read the entire set of posts?

My savior from unstructured time this summer has been teaching Intro to IR three mornings a week. The students have all been genuinely curious, asking perceptive questions and helping each other in discussions. Because UC Irvine has such an ethnically diverse student population, several of the students have been helpful to me and the rest of the class by giving context from regions of the world that I am less familiar with (including East and Southeast Asia, but lots of other knowledge too!).

Explaining new theoretical concepts has also helped me finish up my dissertation. I remind students to always remember what is at the center of the main theories we're studying: power-seeking is central to realism, cooperation is the essence of liberalism, economy is the core of Marxism, etc. Yet when I'm writing, I lose focus, getting lost in the context of West Africa.

After a conversation with my advisor when I was in the weeds, she reminded me to always relate it back to the WPS agenda, the object of my study, to remember how whatever I am writing about at any moment relates to—explains, questions, nuances—the agenda and its implementation. And I remembered this as what I'm telling my own students to focus on when they become overwhelmed with the details.

I've often heard that teaching a subject helps you master it. And it's true that reviewing material for the class has reminded me of concepts that I've never used once I learned them (appeasement, anyone?). But I didn't expect to reinforce my own learning processes and to remember what it's like to be an amateur.

All through grad school we surround ourselves with experts, ideal examples of scholars and scholarship, to model ourselves after and to show us what we should be working toward. Yet at this moment, near the very end of my own student-ness, it is my students, most of whom are new to politics and international relations, who are re-teaching me how to accept the contingency of my knowledge and what it means to grow as an academic.

I realize that I'm fortunate with this group of students as well as to be teaching a class that I am familiar with, so I don't expect every class to be like this every term. But if my next year at Pomona College and the (inshallah) years of teaching after that are similar, I'll be very thankful indeed. Now back to writing.