A few months ago, I was asked to teach my Management and Narrative course to first year undergrads in Victoria College’s elite Vic One program this fall. After a bit of thought I accepted. It was always my favourite course and was well received by students. Teaching it again would be a chance to test whether I still have my pedagogical chops. Since the last time I taught, Public Representations, the book Beth Herst and I co-authored, has been published. This course would be an opportunity to use it with students. Finally, the students in the Vic One program are excellent.

The Curriculum

I’ve now prepared a draft course outline. The course has two purposes: to enhance management students’ ability to understand and create narratives, and to use narrative texts as case studies illustrating effective and ineffective leadership. The main components of the course are discussing a group of films or episodes of streaming series that deal with public or private sector management and developing and presenting personal narratives.

Here are the texts (films and episodes) I will present:

• Blackberry, a Canadian film about the rise and fall of the eponymous cellphone firm.
• The Big Short, a docudrama about the risk-taking contrarians who anticipated and made big bets (shorts) on the global financial crisis of 2008-09.
• Spotlight, a docudrama about the Boston Globe’s investigative journalists who uncovered the Catholic Church’s coverup of decades of sexual abuse of children by clergy.
• Twelve Angry Men, a classic about the dynamics of small group decision-making in a jury for a murder case.
• Selma, director Ava Duvernay’s docudrama about Black Americans’ struggle for voting rights in the southern US in 1965.
• An episode from the sitcom Parks and Recreation in which protagonist Leslie Knope, an idealistic public servant who is running for city council, participates in a candidates’ debate.
• Kim Campbell: Through the Looking Glass, a National Film Board documentary about the short-lived government of Canada’s first and only female prime minister.
• Two episodes of the Danish political drama Borgen, the first dealing with Birgitte Nyborg’s rise to power as prime minister, and the second with her government’s attempt to manage Denmark’s relations with the American military based in, and the indigenous Inuk inhabitants of, Greenland.
• Finally, two National Film Board documentaries about indigenous Canadians’ struggle for economic justice, Honour of the Crown and Incident at Restigouche.

This set of texts is considerably different from previous versions of the course. There are fewer from the US, the global cultural hegemon, and more from Canada. For example, I have taken out the David Fincher-Aaron Sorkin docudrama The Social Network, despite it being an excellent film, and replaced it with Blackberry. I have also given much more attention to texts involving racialized minorities (Blacks, indigenous Canadians) and women. This is in keeping with the emphasis on narratives about these groups in Public Representations.

Course Organization

The course will have two student narratives, a personal narrative and a work narrative. I model both by presenting my own. I suggest they use Erik Erikson’s eight-stage life cycle framework to organize their papers.

I often use narrative-based ads as discussion starters at the beginning of class. I have collected quite a few over the years, and I also encourage students to submit and present ads they have found.

During the pandemic, faculty essentially stopped giving exams. Exams are now back in fashion. In addition, an exam presents an opportunity to test students’ knowledge in a setting in which they cannot consult AI. I try to make exams challenging and creative in that some questions involve applying what they have learned in class to a new context. Looking forward, I will likely assign one or two episodes of Borgen not discussed in class as the basis of a question.

Because my pedagogy involves a lot of participation and group work, it is better to use a flat classroom with tables than an amphitheatre with individual desks. Vic provides such a room. And I will teach at 11 a.m., which is as late in the day as I want, and as early in the day as the students want.

It’s only late June and I already have the course outline ready. (Being able to meet deadlines long in advance is one of the benefits of retirement.) I will let it percolate in my mind for several weeks, possibly making some revisions. I feel joyful anticipation about returning to the classroom.