Leadership Stories: Literature, Ethics, and Authority
Explores how we use story to articulate ethical norms. The syllabus consists of short fiction, novels, plays, feature films and some non-fiction. Major topics include leadership and authority, professionalism, the nature of ethical standards, social enterprise, and questions of gender, cultural and individual identity, and work/life balance. Materials vary from year to year, but past readings have included work by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Seamus Heaney, Aravind Adiga, Ursula LeGuin, Hao Jingfang, Mohsin Hamid, and others; films have included The Lives of Others, Daughters of the Dust, Hotel Rwanda, Hamilton, and others. Draws on various professions and national cultures, and is run as a series of moderated discussions, with students centrally engaged in the teaching process.
Fall 2015
This course explores how we use story to articulate ethical norms. The syllabus consists of short fiction, novels, plays, feature films and some non-fiction. Major topics include leadership and authority, professionalism, the nature of ethical standards, social enterprise, and questions of gender, cultural and individual identity, and work / life balance. Materials vary from year to year, but past readings have included work by Robert Bolt, Michael Frayn, Timothy Mo, Wole Soyinka, H. D. Thoreau, and others; films have included _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hotel Rwanda, The Descendants, Motorcycle Diaries, Three Kings_, and others. Draws on various professions and national cultures, and is run as a series of moderated discussions, with students centrally engaged in the teaching process.
Readings
- Gilbreth, Frank B., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. Cheaper by the Dozen . Laurel Leaf, 1984. ISBN: 9780553272505. (selections)
- SES #: 3 · READINGS AND VIEWINGS: O’Flaherty, Liam. “Two Lovely Beasts.” In Two Lovely Beasts, and Other Stories . The Devin-Adair Company, 1950.
- SES #: 6 · READINGS AND VIEWINGS: Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway . Mariner Books, 2005. ISBN: 9780156030359.
- SES #: 9 · READINGS AND VIEWINGS: Goldstein, Rebecca. “The Legacy of Raizel Kaidish.” In Strange Attractors . Penguin Books, 1994. ISBN: 9780140172461.
- SES #: 11 · READINGS AND VIEWINGS: Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains . W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. ISBN: 9780393339758. (excerpt)
- SES #: 12 · READINGS AND VIEWINGS: Lerner, Ben. Leaving the Atocha Station . Granta Books, 2013. ISBN: 9781847086914.
- Ruseabagina, Paul. An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography . Penguin Books, 2007. ISBN: 9780143038603. (selection)
- Dallaire, Romeo. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda . Da Capo Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780786714872. (selection)
- Wilson, E. O. Consilience . Vintage, 1999, pp. 314–5. ISBN: 9780679768678. (selection)
- SES #: 16 · READINGS AND VIEWINGS: Bolt, Robert. A Man for All Seasons . Vintage, 1990. ISBN: 9780679728221.
- SES #: 19 · READINGS AND VIEWINGS: Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen . Methuen Drama, 1998. ISBN: 9780413724908.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: None G (Fall) 3-0-6 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2015
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.