Blogging Instructions

Group Blog

Assessments and Deliverables

What is a blog? Short for “weblog,” a blog is a publicly accessible online journal to which you can post thoughts, reflections, links to other websites, and the like. There are free blog-hosting services like Blogger.com, as well as services that charge a small fee for hosting. The major advantage of a blog from my perspective is that it is viewable by anyone with a web browser, which means that anybody can join in the conversation; a secondary advantage is the fact that blogs are part of the wider web-based 'Net, so that bloggers can, through their posts, join in wider conversations that take place between sites.

Why do you require blogging for this course? Once upon a time I assigned students traditional journals or weekly one-page critical response papers; such an exercise does get people thinking about the material outside of class and promotes self-reflection, but it had two major drawbacks: each student was simply carrying on a one-on-one dialogue with me, and if I got a bit behind on replying to those weekly papers, the dialogue ground to a halt. Blogging serves the function of a weekly critical response paper but goes one better by encouraging conversations among students since all of the posts are accessible to all of the members of the class.

Why create blogging groups? Rather than having each student maintain an individual blog, which might promote individual reflection but might impede conversation as each student focused on his or her own blog to the detriment of others, I will divide the class into groups of three to five people—a “blogging group”—and have each group maintain a blog for the course of the semester. Participating in a blogging group gives you a ready-made set of conversational partners, a series of posts that you would really have to work hard to avoid reacting to in your own posts, and an opportunity to try out ideas in a group setting before bringing them to wider class discussion—or to elaborate on a portion of the class discussion afterwards.

Are we confined to our own group’s blog?No. All of the class blogs are accessible to everyone, and you are encouraged to expand the conversation beyond your own blogging group by commenting on posts in other locations. You are also welcome to read other groups’ blogs and to reference them in your own posts—preferably by including links to their posts in your own. On the course wall please post your group’s blog URL and identify the group members’ user names so that your classmates may find you and know who you are.

Your individual blogging grade. Everyone will get an individual grade. Although one portion of that grade will be the same for all members of a blogging group, your individual grade will depend on two factors: your individual posting history and your conversational performance.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

The blog’s URL and the real name and user ID of everyone enrolled in the blog should be posted to the course wall as soon as the blog is set up. I am indifferent as to the blog hosting service that you use; I suggest Blogger.com mainly because it’s free and easy to set up. Each of these blogs must have the following features:

1. Every member of the blogging group must be a member of the blog as an individual. In practice this means that each member of the group must have his or her own user ID, so that it will be clear whose posts are whose. You need not use your true name as your blogging ID as long as instructor knows who you are. And please respect people’s privacy by only referring to them on the blog by their preferred username or ID, not by their real name (unless these are the same).
2. The blog must permit comments on individual posts. You may choose to permit anonymous comments or you may require people to create a user ID in order to comment.
3. Each individual post must have a readily accessible static URL that people can use to reference the post. Different hosting services have different ways of making this static URL available to readers, and you should make sure that your blog makes it obvious how people can obtain that address.
4. Finally, each blog must have some easy way that a viewer can bring up all posts written by a specific author. With Blogger.com, this is a matter of tagging your posts and then creating an appropriate sidebar link; other options exist for other blogging platforms.

Every member of the blogging group will receive the same grade for this portion of his or her score; fulfilling all of the technical requirements gets you an easy A on this section. However, I am not going to take class time to explain how to do any of these technical issues. If you have technical questions, I suggest that you either (1) search the Internet, (2) ask around, or (3) set up an appointment for virtual office hours.

INDIVIDUAL POSTING HISTORY

RULES:

• For every session, unless otherwise noted, you must complete at least one blog entry and one comment. There are two kinds of blog entries: A pre-class entry or a post-class entry. The first is due 36 hours before class (so that everyone has time to browse other people’s posts before the live session begins) and the latter is due within 48 hours after class. A pre-class entry consists of a personal “digestion” of or ruminations about the texts assigned for that class. A post-class entry consists of a reflection spurred by the content of the online session, an issue raised by any of the week’s reading(s), or a point raised by someone else in a blog posting for the week.
• Not every week is flexible in terms of whether you can choose to do a pre-class or a post-class entry. Certain weeks require one in particular or even both instances. See the schedule below. If the entry type is not indicated then you may choose to do either a pre-class entry or a post-class entry according to your particular schedule and interests. In terms of the posts that are required of you (meaning for that week you do not have a choice about the deadline or the nature of the entry), four (4) of them are pre-class and three (3) of them are post-class. This leaves 8 blog assignments that are optional. However, out of the course total, you must do a total of nine (9) pre-class entries and six (6) post-class entries including the required cases.
• Given that you do not know what will be happening in class, you may choose to write two entries for one week, if you are inspired with an idea in class even if you already developed your pre-class entry. I will take up to 3 extra blog entries and tally the final blogging grade according to the best blog scores throughout the semester.
• There is no required length of a blog entry. However, better blog entries will develop an idea of a series of paragraphs. In addition to grading the overall content development and the degree of reflection, you should make sure that you correct your blog entries for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors before uploading. Furthermore, if you refer specifically to a quote from the readings, then it is expected that you indicate the page numbers and identify the reading in order to comply with the Academic Integrity stipulations of American University.
• Comments on someone else’s post(s) are a weekly requirement (except where indicated below) that do not add to your grade. However, their absence or low substantive quality lowers your overall grade. Your comment(s) on other people’s blog entries can be applied to either type of entry (pre-class digestion or post-class reflection), and they should be posted between the substantive post deadline for the week and the start of the live session.
• You must copy the live link / URL of each blog entry onto the “blog log” form next to the appropriate type of entry. As such you will keep a running tab of your own work throughout the semester. Halfway through the semester, you will send me the bloglog, at which point I will grade your entries so that you may have a rough idea about the kind of grade your current efforts are generating.

BLOGGING SCHEDULE

Week 1 – PRE-CLASS BLOG REQUIRED

Week 2 – EITHER/OR

Module 1: Can coercive power be overcome?

• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, The First Part (#1-16); The Second Part, #17-21 and #29-31; The Third Part #32-33; and the “Review and Conclusion.”

Week 3 – PRE-CLASS AND POST-CLASS BLOG REQUIRED

Week 4 – EITHER/OR

Module 2: Interests or ideas?

• Max Weber, “Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion,” in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Stephen Kalberg (Roxbury, 2002).
• Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, “Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework,” in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Cornell University Press, 1993).
• Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, “Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 3:2 (1997).

Week 5 – PRE-CLASS REQUIRED

Week 6 – POST-CLASS REQUIRED

Module 3: Can the international environment be remade?

• Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18:4 (1988).
• Alex Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46:2 (1992).
• Barbara Koremenos, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal, “The Rational Design of International Institutions,” International Organization 55:4 (2001).
• Nick Onuf, “Constructivism: A User’s Manual,” in Making Sense, Making Worlds (Routledge, 2013).

Week 7 – NO BLOGGING ACTIVITY. Intermission: A Socratic conversation about the themes introduced thus far. The mid-semester essay is also due this week.

Week 8 – EITHER/OR

Week 9 – EITHER/OR

Module 4: Public authority and the control of violence

• Phil Williams, “Transnational Organized Crime and the State,” in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, ed. Tom Biersteker and Rodney Bruce Hall (Cambridge, 2002).
• Rita Abrahamsen and Michael C. Williams, “Security Beyond the State: Global Security Assemblages in International Politics,” International Political Sociology 3:1 (2009).
• Bruce G. Blair, “Increasing warning and decision time (‘De-Alerting’),” (international conference, Achieving the Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, Oslo, February 26–27, 2008), https://s3.amazonaws.com/static.ironline.american.edu/Jackson+International+Relations/Paper_Blair.pdf
• Hugh Gusterson, “Nuclear Weapons and the Other in the Western Imagination,” Cultural Anthropology 14:1 (1999).

Week 10 – EITHER/OR

Week 11 – EITHER/OR

Module 5: Global business and economic autonomy

• Jeffry Frieden and Ronald Rogowski, “The Impact of the International Economy on National Policies: An Analytical Overview,” in Internationalization and Domestic Politics, ed. Robert Keohane and Helen Milner (Cambridge, 1996).
• Stephan Haggard and Sylvia Maxfield, “The Political Economy of Financial Internationalization in the Developing World,” in Internationalization and Domestic Politics, ed. Robert Keohane and Helen Milner (Cambridge, 1996).
• Claire Cutler, “Private International Regimes and Interfirm Cooperation,” in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, ed. Tom Biersteker and Rodney Bruce Hall (Cambridge, 2002).
• Stephen Kobrin, “Economic Governance in an Electronically Networked Global Economy,” in The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, ed. Tom Biersteker and Rodney Bruce Hall (Cambridge, 2002).
• Naeem Inayatullah, “Beyond the Sovereignty Dilemma: Quasi-States as Social Construct.” In State Sovereignty as Social Construct, edited by Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (Cambridge, 1996).

Week 12 – EITHER/OR

Week 13 – EITHER/OR

Module 6: Is there a global public sphere?

• Kathleen McNamara, “Constructing Authority in the European Union” in Deborah Avant, Martha Finnemore and Susan Sell, eds., Who Governs the Globe? (2010).
• Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, “The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: introduction,” in The Power of Human Rights International Norms and Domestic Change ed. Risse, Sikkink, and Ropp (Cambridge, 1999).
• Andrew F. Cooper, “Beyond Hollywood and the Boardroom: Celebrity Diplomacy,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (2007).
• Heribert Dieter and Rajiv Kumar, “The Downside of Celebrity Diplomacy: The Neglected Complexity of Development,” Global Governance 14 (2008).
• Chapters 1 and 4 in Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders (Cornell, 1998).

Week 14 – PRE-CLASS REFLECTION ONLY

Week 15 – POST-CLASS REFLECTION ONLY

Module 7: The rise and fall of great powers

• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 1 Chapter 1 (§1-23) and Book 5 chapter 7 (§84-116).
• “Comments on Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” British Journal of Sociology 40:2 (1989).
• John Ikenberry, “Liberalism and Empire: Logics of Order in the American Unipolar Age,” Review of International Studies 30:4 (2004).
• Mark Beeson, “Hegemonic transition in East Asia? The Dynamics of Chinese and American Power,” Review of International Studies 35:1 (2009).
• Daniel H. Nexon, “The Balance of Power In the Balance,” World Politics 61:2 (2009).

Fulfilling all of the weekly posting requirements will guarantee you an A in this portion of your score.

CONVERSATIONAL PERFORMANCE

If the previous portion of your blogging grade consists of marks for technical merit, this is the portion of your grade that depends on creativity and artistic flair. In order to blog well, you need to be an active part of a series of online conversations. You signal your participation in such conversations in three ways:

1. Referring to other people’s posts in your own, preferably by referencing their posts in your own post. Note that you are in no way limited to referring to posts made by other members of the class; the Internet is a vast place, and you should feel free to explore it.
2. Commenting on other people’s posts.
3. Reacting to comments on your own posts. This is the most direct way to engage someone in conversation: reacting to something that they have specifically written.

Fourteen comments are required for the semester, but this is the sort of thing that I expect stellar students to be doing on a regular basis. You are in no way limited to posting one comment, especially if the author of the original post posts a comment to your comment.

The point is that you need to be an active participant in online discussions over the course of the semester. Quantity is not the central issue here, as long as you reach the minimum requirements; the quality of your posts and comments is much more important. References, comments, and TrackBacks are simply ways to trace the conversational threads, as is the individual posting record that you are maintaining.

I will send each enrolled student a midcourse report on his or her blogging at the approximate midpoint of the semester (when I return your midterm essay); note that this midcourse report is just a forecast of your likely grade if you continue doing what you have been doing for the rest of the semester. A final report and your overall blogging grade will be sent out after class ends.