{"id":712,"date":"2024-12-04T19:23:08","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T19:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/?page_id=712"},"modified":"2024-12-04T19:33:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T19:33:55","slug":"keynote-address","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/keynote-address\/","title":{"rendered":"Keynote Address"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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2025 APSA Teaching & Learning Conference Keynote Address<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Finding Joy in Teaching during Dark Times <\/strong>with Professor Michelle D. Deardorff\u00a0<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Friday, February 7th<\/strong> | 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Keynote Speaker: <\/strong>
Michelle D. Deardorff <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Adolph S. Ochs Professor Government, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga 
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Michelle D. Deardorff<\/a><\/strong> is the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Government at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). She particularly enjoys teaching classes and engaging with the public in ways that allow people to apply their understandings of law, politics, and political theory to current issues, believing an important role of higher education is to foster thoughtful citizens prepared to participate in governing our communities and nation. Through all her work, Michelle seeks to advance democracy, meaningful discourse, and equality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Michelle<\/em> D.<\/em> Deardorff<\/em>, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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In addition to her traditional research, she is a co-author of Constitutional Law in Contemporary America (3E Cambridge UP) and American Democracy Now (9E McGraw Hill), and sole author of a new text, Race and the Law in the US, forthcoming from Cambridge UP in 2025. Before coming to UTC in 2013, Deardorff spent a decade teaching at Jackson State, a historic black university in Mississippi, and another 12 years at Millikin University, a small private college in Illinois. She is a founding faculty member of the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy, a coalition of academics who promoted civic engagement and popular sovereignty through the study of the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Her twenty-year engagement (1997-2017) with these colleagues resulted in the provision of pedagogical resources, workshops, tours, and two museums designed to aid educators, students, and community members in understanding the promise of democracy. Most recently, Deardorff co-chaired the APSA Ishiyama Presidential Taskforce on Rethinking Political Science Education; its final report was delivered to the discipline in 2024. She can be reached at Michelle-Deardorff@utc.edu.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Session Description: <\/strong>Finding Joy in Teaching during Dark Times<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The last decade has been difficult for political scientists as we have witnessed global attacks on the institutions and values to which we have committed our professional and intellectual lives. We have grieved as we have seen democratic values undermined and deep, apparently unreconcilable, divisions within our Nation. We have observed higher education under profound attack by those who question its value and relevance, while teaching students who continue to struggle with the consequences of disruptions to their education and the uncertainty of our current world. It is easy to lament, to despair, and to grieve. Yet, as Hannah Arendt reminds us in her 1959 address \u201cOn Humanity in Dark Times,\u201d it is in sharing joy that we advance our humanity, even more than when we share our sorrow. In this session, we will explore how we can find joy in our teaching\u2014joy that nurtures hope and sustains us for the work ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If teaching is an act of optimism, how do we understand our work as fundamental, important to democracy, and a practice that can sustain our faith in the possibility of a better future? As an experienced professor who has taught at quite diverse institutions, Deardorff will engage the audience thinking about how we can rediscover the joy of teaching, maintain hope in the meaning of our work, and encourage our colleagues to discover the same. By recognizing that our skills extend beyond the boundaries of our classrooms and that the purpose of our teaching is broader than the priorities of the institutions that employ us, we can find deeper meaning in our work and have a greater impact on our communities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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2025 APSA Teaching & Learning Conference Keynote Address Finding Joy in Teaching during Dark Times with Professor Michelle D. Deardorff\u00a0 Friday, February 7th | 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM Keynote Speaker: Michelle D. Deardorff  Adolph S. Ochs Professor Government, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga  Michelle D. Deardorff is the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-712","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/tlc2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}