Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner, Reader in Comparative Literature and Medical Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature, featured in the press this week thanks to her recent book Exhaustion: A History (Columbia University Press in 2016).
The BBC online site Future, which has a simple mission statement of ‘making you smarter every day, interviewed Anna for an article entitled ‘The Reasons Why Exhaustion and Burnout Are So Common’ by David Robinson. The piece uses Anna’s work to document the historical understanding of exhaustion. ‘Exhaustion has always been with us,’ she explains. ‘What changes through history are the causes and effects that are aligned with exhaustion.’
The full article can be read on the BBC site here: www.bbc.com/future/story/20160721-the-reasons-why-exhaustion-and-burnout-are-so-common
Anna was also interviewed in the print version of Metro, the free newspaper distributed on public transport services across the UK, with over 1 million copies printed daily. The piece entitled ‘Are You Tired of Exhaustion?’ by Jenny Stallard, asks Anna about the relationship between exhaustion and technology. ‘We’ve never in history been as dominated by technology before,’ Anna states. ‘Our exhaustion is related to always being online, always being reachable, never being able to switch off completely.’ The article appeared on page 41 of yesterday’s edition, dated 21 July 2016.
For details of Anna’s monograph Exhaustion: A History, please see the publisher’s page here: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/exhaustion/9780231172301