“Beyond Burnout Culture”

Burnout has become the go-to term for describing our dissatisfaction with work. To break out of North American societies’ obsession with work, we need to rethink our assumptions about the relationship between work and the good life. In this talk, Jonathan Malesic, author of The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives will propose that we should ground our working lives in human dignity, compassion for workers, and a greater emphasis on leisure as a site of meaningful activity. He will show how these ideals are manifested in communities of Benedictine monks and religious sisters.

Jonathan Malesic is a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Chronicle of Higher Education, America, Commonweal, Notre Dame Magazine, The Guardian, The Hedgehog Review, and elsewhere. His writing has been recognized as notable in The Best American Essays four times and in The Best American Food Writing. His latest book, The End of Burnout (University of California Press), was selected as a best book of 2022 by Amazon and the Next Big Idea Club and is being translated into nine languages. He holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Virginia and teaches writing at Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Dallas.

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