Project title

The Art of Burnout

Research question

How do literary and artistic narratives contribute to a better understanding of today's culture of stress and burnout? How can narratives of fatigue and exhaustion serve as catalysts for individual and collective re-calibration, inspiring new forms of personal and societal forms of resilience and sustainability?

Project description

Burnout is widely discussed yet deeply misunderstood. Many still regard it as a personal weakness or an individual health problem, but this project argues that burnout is better understood as a reflection of modern work culture and its associated social inequalities.

Sarah De Mul draws on contemporary art and literature as a lens through which to explore these cultural dimensions of burnout. Weaving personal experience together with the analysis of artistic and literary works, she investigates burnout within the high-pressure work culture of the early twenty-first century. The project ultimately asks how art and literature can help us understand – and perhaps reshape – our relationship with work and exhaustion today.

Selected publications

  • “Burn-outcultuur, diversiteit en inclusie”, Tijdschrift voor Gender Studies, 27.1 (2024) 41-59.
  • Retour San Sebastian. Opgroeien met een vaderland in de verte. (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2017). ISBN
    9789023494782
  • With Elleke Boehmer (eds.), The Postcolonial Low Countries. Literature, Colonialism, Multiculturalism. (Lanham: Lexington Books, 1212). ISBN 9780739164280