Barcelona hosts this week the Mobile World Congress, which means that news about technology will dominate the media for a few days (leaving absurd politics aside). For the last two years, the congress has been preceded by the Mobile Week BCN (http://mobileweekbcn.com/es/), which has presented a dense programme of events (talks, workshops, performances, etc)… in […]
In one of the most eccentric episodes of The X-Files, “Post-modern Prometheus” (5×06), Mulder and Scully visit Dr. Polidori, a geneticist working at his own home lab in a rural location in the heart of the United States. The two FBI agents are investigating a series of attacks against women who have been drugged, raped […]
I taught yesterday an MA seminar on my research, mixing Cultural Studies and Gender Studies. I gave examples of the work I have done within the area I specialize in: Masculinities Studies (and popular fictions). As happens, the aspect of my research that generated the greatest discord was my proposal that we bring back gentlemanliness […]
Last Saturday the Spanish Academy of Cinema honoured the best films produced in 2017 with its Goya Awards. The attendants were offered a red fan decorated with the hashtag #+Mujeres, intended to demand that more women are hired by the Spanish film industry in all its sectors, not just acting. Apparently, some attendees (including women […]
The students in my Gender Studies class could freely choose the subject of their paper and I have ended up marking five (out of twenty-five) on Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). In parallel, I have been asked to peer-review two articles submitted to journals on the same topic. Even a proposal for a […]
A couple of months ago I came across a blog post on a book for children which apparently connects with Harry Potter, as a possible predecessor. This is John Masefield’s 1935 novel The Box of Delights (see https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/nov/30/long-before-harry-potter-the-box-of-delights-remade-childrens-fantasy). I had heard, vaguely, of Masefield (1878-1967) as a distinguished poet (he was appointed Poet Laureate in […]
In my post of 10 October last year I discussed the problems connected with using a methodology based on close reading to teach long texts. The main concern I expressed was that a pedagogy developed to train students into producing literary criticism of poetry might be inadequate for dealing with prose, particularly complete volumes. I […]
A recent report by the British Arts Council, “Literature in the 21st Century: Understanding Models of Support for Literary Fiction” (http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/literature-21st-century-understanding-models-support-literary-fiction) has unleashed much controversy about what exactly ails the most demanding form of prose writing. It is obvious that sales are going down with many literary fiction writers now being unable to live off […]
#metoo: Hashtivist campaign used to evidence how commonplace sexual harassment is for women, in all professional contexts. A group of men responded by using the self-defensive hashtag #NotAllMen, instead of the better suited #LearnToBeGentlemen or #GoodMenShameHarassers. SEE: harassment. Agender: Intelligent individual tired of the obnoxious gender binary, who has made the wise decision to assume […]
If you talk to the truly caring parents of any young girl, you will be dismayed by the appalling panorama they paint of what should be a placid childhood but is not at all. I refer here specifically to the way in which the boys’ consumption of porn from a very early age is poisoning […]