PLIR 3500

Potter is the best professor I have ever had at UVA. He just came from Michigan, so not many people know about him, but he is energetic, funny, and engaging during class. Go to lecture, study the powerpoint slides, and you'll be fine on the tests. This class is very interesting and perfect if you're interested in international relations. TAKE IT!

Great class, excellent professor, and a fascinating topic. A fair bit of interesting reading but you don't have to do it. Grade is based on a midterm and an equally weighted 50 minute final, a 10 page paper on a topic of your choice, and discussion. Highly recommend if you have any interest in the topic

This class did not live up to the hype. Potter was not an engaging professor; all the information from class was read directly off of bland and detailed powerpoint slides that he uploads on day 1 to collab. So there's really no incentive to go to class. Grading this semester consisted of 2 midterms (20 percent each), a paper (20 percent) that's 10 pages long/topic of choice, a final (20 percent) and discussion section (15 percent). Would not recommend. Interesting subject, and very timely, but boring class.

Terrorism and Political Violence was my favorite class this past semester. Professor Potter is incredibly knowledgable about the subject, and that shows in his lectures. While he does use a PowerPoint with basic points, it's important to go to lecture because he throws in many extra details. His lectures are easy to follow, and he does a good job of engaging the class. While the final was tricky, all of his exams, as well as the paper, are manageable. Just study PowerPoint slides, keep up with your readings, and pay special attention to the readings your TA goes over in detail during discussion--they will usually be on the exam. Overall, I could not recommend this class enough.

My absolute favorite class at UVA. Potter is ridiculously knowledgable about the topic and does more than just read off the lecture slides; he actually explains the content in a very articulate and interesting way. The tests are 5-6 multiple choice, 4-5 short answers, and 2-3 essays. Multiple choice are just facts from slides, but make sure you know them because simple mistakes can bone you and make you lose almost 6% per question. Short answers are either identification or any slide that has 4-6 bullet points. Essays are heavily reading based; you can use what Potter talks about during lectures, but you need to name drop and analyze at least 2-3 readings per essay in order to do well. The research paper isn't super difficult, but took me a good 5-6 hours to polish and turn in. I did well, loved the class, and highly enjoy it.

I took this class in the spring when it was "Domestic Politics of IR" and not "Terrorism". Potter is an amazing professor and a really great person to talk to one on one, but the source material for the class in my opinion is really, really dry. You end up spending a lot of time talking about IR theories and institutions, but not much of it sticks and is pretty easily forgettable. The class itself isn't terrible in terms of readings/assignments, but I didn't really find much of it too interesting. Again, I would recommend the class solely because Potter is a great professor (this is the 2nd class I've taken with him), but just be aware that the source material is not super interesting.

I took the Domestic Policy in International Relations PLIR 3500 course. Professor Potter is awesome, but the material was very abstract and based mostly around theories. There is a 15 page paper that is split into two separate papers over the course of the semester and two exams. Great professor, dry material.

I took this class in the spring when it was offered as Domestic Politics of IR because I heard that Professor Potter was awesome. Unfortunately, I was very underwhelmed and this ended up being one of my least favorite classes at UVA and one of the reasons I decided not to become a politics major. I did not find Professor Potter to be an engaging lecturer and the material itself was extremely boring. Like some of the previous comments mentioned, the class was solely based on theories and I felt, after completing the course, that I barely learned anything. The research paper was ridiculous and probably the worst past of the class. Potter expected us to create your own political theory that was never theorized by anyone else ever before and modeled after scholarly literature that people devote their entire professional careers to writing. The reading was absurdly long and irrelevant (and that's coming from a history major, so I'm use to a lot of reading). One pro was that Yu Jin was a really nice and fair TA who provided me with a lot of help on my paper.

I took his Military and American Democracy class, which was the first time he offered it at UVA. Overall, I thought it was an interesting topic and Professor Potter is a very good and knowledgeable professor. Sowon Park was also a great TA who was a decent discussion leader. I'm not a military-oriented person myself, but he did a decent job of making the information easy to digest for anyone regardless of background. The course began with mainly theory about Civil-Military relations which was the framing for the rest of the course. It covered several problems were are facing with civ-mil relations in the U.S. and then ended with case studies comparing the U.S. to the rest of the world. We also had three guest lectures (a former VA governor and two retired 4 star officers), which were a great opportunity to hear from people directly involved in the field. The readings outside of class were fine (some more interesting than others), and you could get by with just reading the abstracts and conclusions and skimming the rest. The class had 5 assignments in total (3 essays and 2 in class exams) and they varied in difficulty. The 3 essays built on each other and were graded pretty fairly. They were all under 2000 words, so they themselves weren't that much work, but they did require a bit of critical thought and research. The midterm and final were both essay-based in class exams based on course-synthesis, but you were allowed a cheat sheet, which made them much less stressful.