{"id":474,"date":"2015-02-10T12:51:12","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T11:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/?p=474"},"modified":"2015-02-10T13:19:04","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T12:19:04","slug":"why-beauty-in-a-business-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/2015\/02\/why-beauty-in-a-business-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Beauty in a Business School?"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"baby\"<\/a>A couple weeks ago I wrote a post<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0about the course in beauty that I am teaching this term at UW-Madison, under the auspices of the Business School and the Bolz Center for Arts Administration. In that post I promised to provide an\u00c2\u00a0essay in which I address the literature that has, thus far, informed my thinking. That essay (published as a separate PDF) is called Why Beauty in a Business School?<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0and it is an attempt to provide some justification for offering a course in beauty at a business school.<\/p>\n

It is not lost on me that there is\u00c2\u00a0something rather ironic about\u00c2\u00a0justifying\u00c2\u00a0a course in beauty and aesthetics in a business school in terms other than “for the sake of learning about the thing\u00c2\u00a0itself.”\u00c2\u00a0When I proposed to teach the class it didn’t occur to me that I would need such justifications. I thought, “Wouldn’t anyone benefit from time spent thinking about beauty?”<\/p>\n

I certainly\u00c2\u00a0would have when I was at university.<\/p>\n

But, of course, such a perspective\u00c2\u00a0is na\u00c3\u00afve. As much as I and other humanities-types may see the intrinsic value of beautiful experiences (in a business school as much as anywhere), a course like this, in this particular setting,\u00c2\u00a0is not intuitive. Further justifications are warranted. Thus, this essay is an answer to those (arts types, business types, and arts-and-business types) with furrowed brows who have asked me over the past year, “Why should business schools teach their students about beauty?”<\/p>\n

Part of me wants to quip, “Well, they probably shouldn’t if they aren’t convinced\u00c2\u00a0that\u00c2\u00a0aesthetics, art, nature, and beauty matter.” However, I recognize the question is sincere and so I have endeavored to offer a sincere response. Moreover,\u00c2\u00a0the management scientists and other scholars cited in this paper make compelling arguments for beauty in a business school.<\/p>\n

The essay attempts to delve into and piece together (though it is far from a synthesis) what I have gleaned over the past year. It\u00c2\u00a0is by no means\u00c2\u00a0a comprehensive literature review. I have gone straight for the literature that is focused on the value of aesthetics or beauty in higher education and business schools in particular–and have not attempted to back up and address the broader question of aesthetics and beauty and why they matter in art or life, more generally.\u00c2\u00a0This is a new area for me. I have an MFA in Acting but spent most of my career in management and philanthropy; my dissertation research is theater history with a neo-institutionalist bent. If anything has prepared me to teach this class (which emphasizes the experience of beauty rather than the philosophy of aesthetics) it is the several years that I lived in NYC and\u00c2\u00a0saw 150-200 performances a year (in theater, dance, music, opera, performance art).<\/p>\n

So, this is\u00c2\u00a0my first plunge\u00c2\u00a0into the topic\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0it is a working document<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0I hope you\u00c2\u00a0will submit suggestions for further reading as well as critiques\u00e2\u20ac\u201dparticularly if I have misunderstood or mischaracterized anyone’s work.<\/p>\n

This essay is more academic in style and tone than my typical Jumper posts–in large part this is because academics were\u00c2\u00a0the first audience for this piece. It’s also long (~5,000 words) so grab a large cup of coffee before you dig in.<\/p>\n

I hope it’s not tedious.<\/p>\n

The class starts today (Tuesday, Feb 10) and I could not be more enthused. I will use Jumper to give a sense of our weekly\u00c2\u00a0readings, experiences, assignments, and discussions.<\/p>\n

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  A couple weeks ago I wrote a post\u00c2\u00a0about the course in beauty that I am teaching this term at UW-Madison, under the auspices of the Business School and the Bolz Center for Arts Administration. In that post I promised to provide an\u00c2\u00a0essay in which I address the literature that has, thus far, informed my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[31,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-beauty","7":"tag-beauty","8":"tag-business","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p15Pqw-7E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jumper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}