Suggestions for a Course on Leadership

Sat Oct 5 16:58:09 UTC 2013

This is a great idea for a course. Through the Snow is a really good example. It's also just one paragraph so easy to integrate.

Tolstoy reflects quite a bit on Napoleon as a leader in War and Peace, mostly through Andrei Bolkonsky's reflections. But there are other passages about the constraints upon leaders as well. And then Tolstoy himself becomes a leader for various causes, including nonviolence and certain forms of ethical behavior. Some paintings by Repin might be useful, and the treatment by Steven Marks in How Russia shaped the Modern World would be nice to use as part of Tolstoy's larger influence beyond Russia.

Turgenev ruminates on Hamlet and Quixote has at least character types with broad leadership potential, and I believe he characterizes Khor as a natural leader at least of his family in the first of the Sportsman's Sketches.

Gorky's Mother learns to become a leader (partly by replacing motherly by brotherly love), and there are plenty of examples from socialist realist novels of leader types making speeches, and in adaptations to film of people suddenly making speeches to lead a crowd (Pudovkin's Mother among others).

Strelnikov is a leader, and Zhivago has followers.

The image of Peter the Great would be pretty fruitful, I would expect. Looking at the statue by Falconet, followed by Pushkin's treatment in the bronze Horseman, followed by Belyi's treatment in Petersburg could make a nice segment.

It might be fun to discuss why Nicholas II was considered a weak leader, with some analysis of his characterization as a family man above all.

Encomia (in lit and art) to Stalin as a leader would certainly be sobering, alongside esp. Mandelshtam's Kremlin Mountaineer.

Russell Scott Valentino
Professor and Chair
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Indiana University
502 Ballantine Hall
Bloomington, IN 47405

On Oct 5, 2013, at 9:23, "Lioudmila Fedorova" <lf85 at GEORGETOWN.EDU<mailto:lf85 at GEORGETOWN.EDU>> wrote:

One that immediately comes to mind is Shalamov's "Through the Snow" - about writers as leaders - and "Major Pugachev's Last Battle."

Milla Fedorova

On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 2:13 PM, Steven Brett Shaklan <ss2327 at columbia.edu<mailto:ss2327 at columbia.edu>> wrote:
Dear Seelangers,

I’m putting together a continuing education course on Leadership in Literature for a professional audience. The goal of the course is to get students to really dig in to a good selection of nuanced, complex fictional situations where characters need to make decisions and exhibit leadership behaviors and have the students debate the issues at play and the wisdom of the characters.

I’d also like to provide some non-fiction readings (philosophy, essays perhaps) to provide some frameworks through which the students can consider the fictional episodes (Plato, Machiavelli, Nietzsche come immediately to mind).

I have a short-list of works, but I am appealing to the group to see if you have any suggestions for readings that relate to this theme. They need not be explicitly about political, military, or business leaders (although that’s great too), as long as they present situations where characters demonstrate (or fail to demonstrate) key characteristics of leadership. Particularly welcome are short stories, novellas, or longer works that can be excerpted; it’s an adult, day-job audience and I don’t want to overwhelm them with reading. That said, I do want to be reasonably comprehensive on the topic.

Any suggestions would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Thank You!

Steven Shaklan

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