The Arts of Leading: Perspectives from the Humanities and the Liberal Arts

A deeply insightful approach to cultivating leaders of character centered on the arts and humanities

What does it mean to lead? Whom do we consider to be leaders? And how might viewing leadership through the many lenses of the humanities expand our understanding of how it is imagined, represented, and enacted?

Drawing on insights from eminent scholars in the classics, philosophy, religion, literature, history, art, music, and theater, The Arts of Leading reveals the power of the arts and humanities to unsettle common assumptions about leadership. Rather than instrumentalizing the arts and humanities or reducing them to mere management resources, this series of thoughtful and refreshing essays engages a litany of diverse and nuanced perspectives to uncover alternative ways of imagining and embodying leadership across different historical, moral, political, and cultural contexts.

By exploring how a wide range of disciplines can illuminate and humanize complex aspects of leadership that are often obscured in a discourse hooked on reductive paradigms and quick fixes, The Arts of Leading invites leaders, scholars, and citizens to expand their practice of leadership in our ever-evolving world.

Edward Brooks is executive director of the Oxford Character Project and director of the Programme for Global Leadership in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He is also cofounder of Oxford’s SDG Impact Lab and coeditor of Cultivating Virtue in the University (2022) and Literature and Character Education in Universities (2022). Michael Lamb is the F. M. Kirby Foundation Chair of Leadership and Character, executive director of the Program for Leadership and Character, and associate professor of interdisciplinary humanities at Wake Forest University. He is also an associate fellow of the Oxford Character Project and author of A Commonwealth of Hope (2022) and coeditor of Cultivating Virtue in the University (2022) and Everyday Ethics (Georgetown University Press, 2019). Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford. She is a founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial literary studies, and internationally known for her research in the anglophone literatures of empire and anti-empire.