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Beyond the Boundaries of Fantasia: An ancient imagining of the future of leadership

"Strange Things Afoot at the Taco Cabana", Group Photo from the UTSA Workshop on Ancient Leadership

This page is referenced by:

credits 41 gallery 2016-07-28T18:58:08-07:00
The Course as Album
The aim of this project has been to create a semester-long course of study on ancient leadership, with a view toward developing ideas and ideals for the future of leadership, in all areas of life. Hence the title, "Beyond the Boundaries of Fantasia," which takes its inspiration from a scene in The Neverending Story. The Cover Art is taken from the Column of Trajan and done in the style of John Lennon's Imagine album.

As an "album" this project works on three levels. The album itself seeks to address the major problems and solutions to leadership in the ancient world, with a view toward developing more effective and more creative solutions to modern leadership problems. The individual "songs," i.e., the modules, are focused on a particular time-period and often one or two particular leaders and the special problems they faced. The "verses" within the songs are the steps that participants take in exploring these ancient leaders.

What is special about this course:
- it is thoroughly collaborative
- it serves as a reminder that leadership study should be as much about creativity as it is about inquiry
- the site is free and open, even to students not registered at a university
- the course content will be supplemented by weekly common sessions
- participants in the course will engage with one another at their home institutions, during the weekly common sessions, and in online channels hosted by Slack.com
- volunteer instructors will offer weekly virtual office hours to anyone participating in the course
Toward a Collaborative Syllabus
Friday, January 8, 2016, San Francisco, California, Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies
Joel Christensen and Norman Sandridge organized and hosted a workshop on Developing an Introductory Course on Ancient Leadership. The workshop lasted for 1:30. Here is a copy of the program and here is a summary of the events, including participants.

Friday, March 4-Saturday, March 5, University of Texas-San Antonio.
Joel Christensen, Eve Browning, and Will Duffy hosted the annual Brackenridge Distinguished Professor and Workshop. Norman Sandridge spoke on "Alcibiades, Psychopathy, and Our Ancient Ambivalence toward the Psychopathic Leader," and several scholars working in multiple fields participated in the workshop on Saturday.

Spring-Early Summer, online.
Mallory Caterine, Joel Christensen, John Esposito, and Norman Sandridge met countless times via Google Hangout to discuss the procedure and layout of each of the 7-hour modules for the ancient leadership course. The creators of the different modules chatted online using Slack.com.
a tribute to the artists!
We would like to thank especially those who took the time to spearhead the creation of each module, the goal of which was to provide participants in the site a seven-hour private study of ancient leadership, followed by three hours of group, or in-class, activity. They are pictured above and we recognize their contributions below:
- James "Jimmy" Capreedy (Hobart and William Smith Colleges): creator of "The Song Remains the Same"
- Mallory Monaco Caterine (Tulane University): creator of "I Know What Boys Like," "Getting to Know You," and "Who Runs the World? Girls!"; co-creator of "I'm Every Woman"
- Joel Christensen (Brandeis University): creator of "Stranger than Fiction" and "Meet the New Boss"
- Eli Embleton (director, Leaderwork, Inc.): co-creator of "Golden Years"
- John Esposito (research director, DeveloperZone; recent UNC Classics PhD): creator of "Born to Run"
- Victoria Győri (King's College London): creator of "Money Talks"
- Ulrike Krotscheck (Evergreen State University): creator of "Spirits in the Material World"
- Jonathan MacLellan (University of Texas-San Antonio): co-creator of "Golden Years"
- Kenny Morrell (Rhodes College): creator of "Socrates' Last Stand"
- Norman Sandridge (Howard University): creator of "You Can Go Your Own Way" and "He Will Rock You"; co-creator of "I'm Every Woman"; general editor and producer (helping to arrange the individual modules and linking them together)
- Christine Tulley (Findlay University): creator of "A Political Thriller c. 63 BCE"
The site went public on July 29, 2016.