Instructor: Dr. Stephen Kim

3 credits. Letter grades only.
Offered: Spring.

Visit the Class Roster for Course Times

Course Description

What can we learn about leadership from pathbreakers such as Grace Lee Boggs, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, and Sylvia Rivera? While traditional scholarship on leadership has focused on corporations, politics, and higher education, leaders exist in many other spaces. Activists, for example, demonstrate many of the proven hallmarks of effective leadership: listening to others, taking risks, recognizing power, and forging communities. This course seeks to galvanize leadership education by putting traditional leadership scholarship in conversation with the writings of activists and humanistic scholars. Through this juxtaposition, we will explore and examine our preconceived notions of “leadership,” “diversity,” and “inclusion.” We will analyze our own personal experiences to articulate a more informed vision for inclusive leadership and to strategize ways to lead across difference with empathy and awareness of power. As this course is a writing seminar, we will use writing as a method for thinking thoroughly about questions related to inclusion and leadership. Writing assignments will involve scholarly analysis, critical reflection, and substantial revision.

Learning Outcomes

• Examine how historical and societal structures of power, privilege and oppression manifest in leadership contexts
• Synthesize a more informed conception of inclusive leadership from both traditional organizational scholarship and the work of activists and writers
• Develop dialogue skills to lead diverse groups with curiosity and empathy
• Apply findings from scholarship on critical dialogue, diversity, organizational psychology, and social justice to identify opportunities for responsible allyship as leaders
• Reflect critically on past leadership experiences to construct a more inclusive and equitable approach for future leadership

Enrollment limited to:

ILR sophomores or others, with permission, who have not satisfied their ILR Advanced Writing Requirement. Not open to first-year students.

Prerequisites:

ILRID 2510, EDUC 2610/ILRID 2610, or permission of the instructor.

Note: If the course is full, email the instructor to be added to the waitlist.