Leadership Through Fiction, Columbia University

The following video was filmed in 2013 to describe 10 and 12-week versions of the course. While the format and certain readings have changed, viewing the video will give you some insight into the vision, purpose and pedagogy of the class.Video: https://vimeo.com/53370001. This course will use fictional narratives (novels, plays, screenplays, television and feature films), supported by non-fictional texts, to evaluate a variety of challenges that face developing business leaders. The course will build the leadership resources of each student by offering them the opportunity to live through the experiences of literary, stage and screen characters, reflecting on how the characters successfully or unsuccessfully guide and motivate themselves and others toward desired goals. How are decisions made, how is the context evaluated, how is risk managed, how are internal values clarified, how are others motivated to follow, how , when successful , are the desired ends achieved...and when not achieved, what could have been done to reach the desired goals? This course is founded in the belief that the imaginative experience of interacting with narrative offers students a powerful and unique opportunity to prepare for future experiences, engaging in a visceral way with conflict that will prepare them for better decision-making and professional choices. Post-Discipline's Principal Investigator Merve Emre has written about her experience of observing classes on this course; see https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/post-disciplinary-reading-and-literary-sociology. This information has been collected for the Post-Discipline Online Syllabus Database. The database explores the use of literature by schools of professional education in North America. It forms part of a larger project titled Post-Discipline: Literature, Professionalism, and the Crisis of the Humanities, led by Dr Merve Emre with the assistance of Dr Hayley G. Toth. You can find more information about the project at https://postdiscipline.english.ox.ac.uk/. Data was collected and accurate in 2021/22.