William Stewart (Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures)
First-Year Seminar 53H | 4 Credits (Fall 2024) | CANVAS SITE
Thursday, 9:45 AM – 11:45 AM
Who hasn’t felt burnout? Who hasn’t felt it more acutely in the years since the pandemic? And who hasnt struggled to define just what exactly this feeling is or where it comes from? This first-year seminar takes a close look at the metaphor that dominates conversation around topics as diverse as Gen-Z, social media, the gig economy, front-line workers, dating apps, and mental health: being burned out. This metaphor requires us to see people as stores of energy or reserves of potential to be tapped, and our seminar will investigate the ideas and events that got us here. We will consider how capitalism has long served to vex humans sense of wholeness and fulfillment, even as it asks us to view ourselves first and foremost as productive workers. We will reflect on the role of religion in shaping a culture defined by suffering and reward, even if no one goes to church anymore. We will ask how burnout manages to infiltrate and deteriorate even our most intimate activities, like sleep. And we will chart various strategies of resistance towards burnout that have been attempted over the years, from hippies to slackers, from quitters to off-the-gridders. Through a combination of canonical works of economic theory, contemporary philosophy, literature, film, and art, this seminar will explore the causes of, symptoms of, and responses to the feeling of burnout that threatens anyone who organizes their life around productivity, achievement, and success.