Fictions at Work

3 Credits.

When you are working for a business, how do you distinguish your ideas, actions, and responsibilities from the firms’—if that is even possible? What is corporate culture or a corporate person, and how is it similar or different from any other kind of culture or person? These and related questions inspired and fascinated writers from the nineteenth century through the present. By reading and thinking about short stories, novels, films, and a play, we will explore these issues and potential resolutions to them. The course especially considers how problems of action, agency, and responsibility in capitalism become an intriguing challenge for writers and filmmakers. Texts by Herman Melville, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alice Munro, and George Saunders, and David Mamet; films Charlie Chaplin, Boots Riley, Kitty Green, and Bong Joon-ho.