The Joys of Teaching Literature, started in September 2010 and with a Spanish version since July 2021, is a blog for ranting and raving about teaching and researching English Literature, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies, and other aspects of the Anglophone world. I publish a post once a week, usually on Monday. Please, download the yearly volumes for free or read the volume collecting some of the entries (Passionate Professing: The Context and Practice of English Literature, 2023). The comments option is not available, sorry, but you may contact me through my e-mail address, Sara.Martin@uab.cat. The contents of this blog are protected by a type 4 Creative Common License (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd)).

  • IN SEARCH OF GOOD MEN (AS ANTI-PATRIARCHAL ROLE MODELS)

    I have finally seen the BBC’s adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House (2005) and Little Dorrit (2008), both scripted by the very talented Andrew Davies. Although I bought the DVD pack which includes both basically because I wanted to see the highly famed Bleak House, and I had no particular interest in seeing Little Dorrit, I…

  • GOING BACK WITH ALICE TO CHILDHOOD (WITHIN LIMITS)

    Next week I am returning to Wonderland once again, this time to introduce the students in my Victorian Literature class to Carroll’s classic. To be honest, I’m not completely sure that I like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) in the same way I like, for instance, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911). I’m truly…

  • BOXED IN: ACADEMIC LIFE, TERRITORIALISM AND STRAYING OFF THE PATH (WITH THE BOLSHOI BALLET)

    I have just accepted tutoring an MA dissertation on how the new digital media conditions the task of the dancer and choreographer. What is an (English) Literature teacher doing supervising this? Let me retrace the steps. Since I have always been interested in the process of film adaptation, having published many articles about it, and…

  • WALTER TEVIS’ SF MASTERPIECE MOCKINGBIRD: THE END OF LITERACY

    I did not mention in my post of 2 October on post-apocalyptic fiction Walter Tevis’ excellent novel Mockingbird (1980) as I started reading it right after writing the piece. It refuses to be consigned to my memory without further ado, so here we go. As it happened to me, the name Walter Tevis may be…

  • THE PARADOXES OF MIGRATION: SILENCES, ABSENCES AND UNHEEDED (LITERARY) WARNINGS

    I have attended this week the international conference “New Typologies of (E/Im)Migration: Mobility and Transcultural Spaces” beautifully organized by my good friend José Manuel Estévez Sáa (http://www.josemanuelestevezsaa.com/). This was also the 17th Culture and Power International Conference, marking the twentieth anniversary of our seminar’s activities (http://www.cultureandpower.org/). I am not myself at all a specialist in…