As syllabus season shifts into high gear, faculty and students may be looking for resources they can use in their courses. Good Authority has several new teaching resources and has collected them all on this landing page, which we will continue to update.
Here are three resources – two new, one old – to know about. And as we continue to get our footing as an independent site, we now invite readers to submit suggestions or proposals for these resources, via the forms below. We will need your help to build up a library of resources that will be useful to faculty, students, and general readers alike.
1. NEW: Good to Know: political science explainers
Today, Good Authority launches a new initiative: Good to Know, a series of explainers on essential topics or concepts in political science. These will include a list of related Good Authority coverage, as well as further reading by political scientists.
These explainers are meant to be “evergreen” – i.e., not necessarily pegged to the news – but we will update them as events warrant. They will be “living” documents and we welcome suggestions or feedback.
Today’s Good to Know, by contributor Stacie Goddard, is on the concept of collective security, a topic that will be much in the news in 2024 as many countries go to the polls with international commitments very much on the ballot.
Do you have a proposal for an explainer, either one you want to read, or one you would write? Send us your suggestions or proposals using this form! Please note that we will review all proposals but not all will be published. Anyone can request an explainer; potential authors must hold a PhD in political science.
2. NEW: Good Playlist
Our second new initiative is Good Playlist, where we present curated collections of music or videos related to a political science theme. These might be a music playlist on a topic or keyed to different lectures in a course; a series of video clips on a theme; or movie or TV episode lists that are relevant for teaching political science. They will have brief descriptions, suggested further reading and, wherever possible, embedded or linked playlists. These might be useful for lectures, or enrichment outside of class.
Check out the Good Playlists we have already, including Christopher Federico’s Week in One Song 2023 Mixtape; Alexandra Guisinger’s list of foreign policy related presidential campaign ads dating back to Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign; and our own Editor-in-Chief Kim Yi Dionne’s African Politics playlist. More playlists are coming soon.
Do you have a good playlist with a political science theme? Want someone to make one? Know someone who has one? Send us your suggestions using this form! Please note that we will review all proposals but not all will be published.
3. Good Authority topic guides
If you’re looking for Good Authority coverage on a topic, don’t forget our topic guides, which index prior pieces on related themes. These topic guides were compiled during the TMC days and still point to versions of articles at the Washington Post, but we will be migrating those links over to Good Authority. In the meantime, you can find a freely accessible version of these pieces at Good Authority by putting the relevant title or author into our search engine.
Speaking of which, our search engine is really useful in itself. Try putting in a topic or phrase – it will show you all our prior coverage, with no paywall.
This isn’t a full list of everything that’s available: don’t forget the Good Chats, the new Good Authority Podcast, and our free newsletter.
As always, we welcome your feedback. Are there other formats you would find useful for teaching (or as a student)? Have a question, spot an error, or found a broken link? Please email us at contact@goodauthority.org.
And let us know by email or social media how you use these resources! We love hearing from you.