COFFEE WITH STUDENTS: THE IDEA OF MENTORSHIP

I was having coffee with an American visiting scholar and a local colleague from UB, and, I’m not sure in what exact moment of the conversation, he asked whether we had the habit of taking coffee with students, meaning the teachers in each Department. My colleague quickly replied “no, we don’t” and I answered almost […]

FIRST WEEK WITH HARRY: GLEE (AND WANDS)

I have started teaching my elective subject ‘Cultural Studies in English: The Harry Potter Series’ this week… and it’s been a very good beginning. I have around 50 students, of which 8 (I think) are auditors (non-registered students who get no credits); they come from BA degrees such as Translation or Anthropology and three are […]

THE GENTLEMAN PLANTER, AN OXIMORON: FANNY KEMBLE’S JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE ON A GEORGIAN PLANTATION 1838-39

Following the thread started by my reading Solomon Northup’s memoir Twelve Years a Slave (1853), prompted by Steve McQueen’s film adaptation, I came across a list of films about slavery. This included Enslavement: The True Story of Fanny Kemble (2000), an apparently mediocre TV movie. I knew about Kemble as a famous Victorian English actress […]