NWO Open Competitie M Re-Imagining Burnout and the Cultural Narrative of Productive Adulthood through Literature

Burnout is today mostly perceived as an individual psychological vulnerability, which risks perpetuating harmful stigma. This project focuses on an important, yet underexamined, systemic aspect of the burnout phenomenon: its entwinement with cultural ideas of what it means to be a successful adult in terms of productivity. The project will explore this issue by developing a literary age(ing) studies perspective combining text analysis of burnout fiction with fieldwork on Shared Reading as a co-creative approach. Crucial to this project is the collaboration with two societal partners, De Culturele Apotheek and Nederlandse Orde van Beroepscoaches.