Self-Optimization and Self-Management - Detailseite

Very likely, you will find a course, seminar or workshop like this in Schools of Business Administration, Continued Education units for managers and self-employed entrepreneurs or Advanced Training offers for occupational psychologists. The difference between those classes and this one is that they mean it: they want to pass on skills for self-optimization or self-management. In contrast, what I want to do in this class is to critically observe the phenomenon. Since Frederick Winslow Taylor (The Principles of Scientific Management), Dale Carnegie (How to win friends and influence people) and Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich) ideas of self-optimization and self-management have become a hallmark of normative workplace mentality in the United States. Even before this (think of Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson) work on the self was a part of the American self-definition. In this seminar, we will explore and analyze the ideas of self-optimization and self-management, describe their objectives, ideological underpinnings, features and strategies and try to be aware of differences in race and gender and what they do not do. Subsequently, we will (in the form of group projects) study individual self-optimization or self-management tools (in books, films, the internet, Instagram or YouTube) and relate their assertions and methods to the critical thinking and critical apparatus we have until then, hopefully, assembled.

Reading (in parts or completely):

• Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided. How Positive Thinking is undermining America. New York: Henry Holt, 2009 – also published as: Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World,
• Dale Carnegie, How to win friends and influence people. (1936) London: Random House, 2006.
• Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. (1937) New York, Penguin, 2005.

Additional excerpts from: Benjamin Franklin, Ralph-Waldo Emerson, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Eva Illouz, Jackson Lears, Jordan Peterson, Sheila Heti and others…

Support:

There will be a Moodle site with information and links. You will receive access to this site in April through the email with which you registered in Agnes.

As "spezielle Arbeitsleitung" students will produce an academic poster on Self Optimization//Self-Management in groups of 4 or 5 persons. As a MAP, students in Master American Studies will have to write a term paper (in this or another seminar in the Module).

Please register through Agnes