The Duck of Minerva

Andrew Szarejko

Andrew A. Szarejko is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wartburg College. He is the author of American Conquest: The Northwest Indian War and the Making of US Foreign Policy (Stanford University Press, 2025) and the editor of Pandemic Pedagogy: Teaching International Relations amid COVID-19 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). His work has also been published in journals such as PS: Political Science and Politics, Millennium, The Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and The Journal of Global Security Studies.

Recent Posts

After Anarchy? On Hierarchy, Heterarchy, and Multiplicity

After Anarchy? On Hierarchy, Heterarchy, and Multiplicity

by Andrew Szarejko | 16 June, 2025 | , ,

Kenneth Waltz famously claimed that anarchy—i.e., the absence of a global sovereign—is the ordering principle of world politics, and much International Relations (IR) scholarship since then has aimed to debunk the claim that anarchy defines IR as a subject. Today, some aim to do so by offering new conceptual foundations for IR. This post is not a relitigation of the “paradigm wars” of the 1980s and ‘90s that Waltz’s work did much to provoke. Rather, what I am interested in noting here is that some seem to think that whether it is anarchy or otherwise, we need some conceptual foundation for...

read more
My Best Classroom Reads of the Year

My Best Classroom Reads of the Year

by Andrew Szarejko | 31 December, 2024 | , ,

Amid the annual deluge of end-of-year lists, I started to think about what readings generated the best classroom discussions I have overseen in the past calendar year. That list of readings is below, but I first need to provide some context. I teach seven courses per year—three each in Wartburg’s Fall and Winter Terms and one in our May Term. These include courses in Security Studies and American Politics as well as general education seminars (of which I occasionally teach two sections per term). My classes are relatively small—usually 10 to 15 students in Political Science classes and up to...

read more
The Classroom and the Magic Circle

The Classroom and the Magic Circle

by Andrew Szarejko | 18 December, 2024 | , ,

I wrote a chapter for a newly published edited volume, Teaching Political Science and International Relations for Early Career Instructors. The volume itself, capably edited by Michael P.A. Murphy and Misbah Hyder, is indeed concerned primarily with providing guidance for “Early Career Instructors” (ECIs) ranging from Ph.D. students to tenure-track faculty members. I was asked to write about mentorship for ECIs—given the challenges one faces in the classroom, how can mentors support ECIs? My chapter, “Teaching in Context,” argues against the idea that there is one “right” way to teach any...

read more
The Frontier Politics of Horizon

The Frontier Politics of Horizon

by Andrew Szarejko | 5 July, 2024 | , ,

In the recent Settling for Less: Why States Colonize and Why They Stop, Lachlan McNamee makes a rationalist argument—“colonization projects” are “characterized by a triangle of actors—settlers, indigenes, and the central state,” and for his purposes, we can “assume that all settler migration is voluntary and economically driven”. McNamee is not the only one with such a reading of colonial politics. Director, co-writer, and star Kevin Costner takes a similar view of the nineteenth-century American frontier in his recent film, Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter One. (Hereafter, Horizon....

read more
Staff Rides as Pedagogical Practice in International Relations

Staff Rides as Pedagogical Practice in International Relations

by Andrew Szarejko & So Jin Lee | 18 March, 2024 | ,

Over the past few decades, Political Science has seen an increasing institutionalization of Scholarship on Teaching and Learning (SoTL) through journals, book series, and professional associations. Over at PS: Political Science and Politics, we add to this body of literature by making the case for a pedagogical practice borrowed from Professional Military Education (PME)—the staff ride. A staff ride combines the study of historical campaigns with structured visits to relevant sites and after-action analysis, offering a unique and immersive learning experience. While staff rides originate in...

read more