Business Literature

Course Description

This course explores business and the workplace through imaginative literature and essays. Students will study poems, plays, short stories, and essays with themes or story lines that emanate from the workplace. Students will read, interpret, and analyze the literature while responding to the connections between occupation and personal identity and the connections between social and personal significance. Students will note and discuss trends in society that are illustrated by business and workplace attitudes and portrayed in literature.

Topics and Objectives

Elements of Literature and Common Workplace Themes

• Examine the elements of literature.
• Explain how the elements of literature are used in different genres.
• Examine how common workplace themes are explored in different literary genres.

Poetry and the Work Environment

• Analyze selected works of poetry in relation to their portrayal of the work environment.
• Examine the social significance of interactions in the workplace as illustrated through poetry.
• Assess perspectives of diversity, understanding, moral values, personal integrity, and social justice in the workplace as illustrated through poetry.
• Explain the significance of a work of poetry, relating its thematic emphasis to current trends in the workplace.
• Explain how literary elements specific to poetry shape reader response to themes portrayed in poetry.
• Apply a theme from a poetry selection to experiences in the workplace, explaining how the reading has enriched your understanding of that experience.

Fiction and the Work Environment

• Analyze selected works of fiction in relation to their portrayal of the work environment.
• Examine the social significance of interactions in the workplace as illustrated through fiction.
• Assess perspectives of diversity, understanding, moral values, personal integrity, and social justice in the workplace as illustrated through fiction.
• Explain the significance of a work of fiction, relating its thematic emphasis to current trends in the workplace.
• Explain how literary elements specific to fiction shape reader response to themes portrayed in fiction.
• Apply a theme from a fiction selection to experiences in the workplace, explaining how the reading has enriched your understanding of that experience.

Essays and the Work Environment

• Analyze selected essays in relation to their portrayal of the work environment.
• Examine the social significance of interactions in the workplace as illustrated through essays.
• Assess perspectives of diversity, understanding, moral values, personal integrity, and social justice in the workplace as illustrated through essays.
• Explain the significance of an essay, relating its thematic emphasis to current trends in the workplace.
• Explain how the literary elements that define essays shape reader response to themes portrayed in essays.
• Apply a theme from an essay selection to experiences in the workplace, explaining how the reading has enriched your understanding of that experience.

Literature, Values, and Social Change

• Compare the ways different authors treat particular themes, how treatment of these themes differs across cultures, and how these treatments change over time.
• Explore reasons specific literary types commonly portray certain workplace themes.
• Compare and contrast literary forms: fiction, nonfiction, short story, essay, and poetry in order to explain what each form offers to the work environment.
• Analyze how literature deals with social change.
• Evaluate which elements of social change literature addresses well and which not so well, and explain why this is the case.