This cruel month of May is turning out to be quite peculiar in my academic life as regards doctoral dissertations. Today is 23, and in the three weeks of May I’ve gone through: an examining board for a dissertation supervised by someone else, the defence (or viva) of the second PhD dissertation I’ve supervised, the […]
(A brief note to say that this week-long absence from this blog feels much longer. May and not April is the cruellest month, if we judge by the overwhelming –or underwhelming– feeling that Spring is here, classes soon to end but pressure on our shoulders is higher than ever. Every conversation with a colleague ends […]
Doctoral dissertations are the strangest genre because they’re both the record of a process of learning and its final product. PhD candidates are so overwhelmed by the effort made throughout the years that they don’t seem to notice this particularity until, precisely, the time of the ‘viva’ (or ‘defence,’ as we call it in Spain […]
My good friend José Francisco Fernández Sánchez, from the University of Almería, emails me to announce good news: the volume gathering together the complete short stories by Margaret Drabble, A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, is just out (see http://www.amazon.com/Day-Life-Smiling-Woman-Complete/dp/0547550405). He’s the proud, happy editor. Congratulations!! José Francisco includes in his message […]
I’ve been interviewed by Raúl Calvo for his blog, El cinéfago de la Laguna Negra, and here’s the link: http://elcinefagodelalagunanegra.blogspot.com/2011/04/sara-contra-los-monstruos.html Enjoy!!
I seem to be developing an allergy to novels, for causes I find hard to diagnose. I have frequently heard that when compulsive readers reach a certain age (em, mid-forties) we get tired of novels and seek in other genres the literary and intellectual satisfaction we crave for. This may be happening to me, as […]
This entry is prompted by a suggestion from one of my senior colleagues, recommending that we invite EU (= non-Spanish) researchers to the examining boards of our doctoral students. At UAB we do have something called ‘Doctorado con mención europea’ (European Doctorate), which entails quite a complicated system of validation for dissertations: a three-month stay […]
I was head of department for a brief stint (2005-8), a hectic time that left me with the perfect metaphor for what we, academics, do: plate-spinning. Recall the stereotypical Chinese circus artist, keeping a dozen plates furiously spinning: that’s us. Preparing and marking exercises, writing paperwork, preparing and teaching and classes, answering email (lots of…), […]
A student in our Department has bragged (in a classroom, before a teacher and classmates) that he has passed an English Literature subject (mine) with a high mark without having read any of the set texts. How? Quite possibly, he has attended classes regularly, seen film adaptations and downloaded guides to the set texts. Yes, […]
As everyone who’s read or seen Pygmalion knows, Shaw failed to give his play a coherent ending, which is why audiences have always fantasised that, somehow, Eliza and Higgins find happiness together, in love. This is, of course, nonsense, as they make an impossible couple, something both realise but that Eliza, like the audience, resists. […]