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 from https://ddd.uab.cat/record/116328, 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)).

  • SOBRE LA BASURA: DOS CRÍTICAS MORDACES

    Este post está inspirado en dos reseñas de libros muy diferentes. El 7 de noviembre Laura Miller publicó en Slate la reseña de Iron Flame de Rebecca Yarros. El artículo se titula “‘I’ve Been Yours for Longer Than You Could Ever Imagine’: Is the dragon-school ‘romantasy’ series that’s dominating the bestseller lists actually any good?”…

  • DETRÁS DE LA MÁSCARA: MASCULINIDADES AMERICANAS EN EL DOCUMENTAL CONTEMPORÁNEO

    Este post tiene el mismo título que el último libro que he publicado, la traducción al castellano que yo misma he hecho de mi segunda monografía en inglés, American Masculinities in Contemporary Documentary Film: Up Close Behind the Mask. El original salió en mayo, y ahora aparece la traducción en la Biblioteca Javier Coy de…

  • LITTLE SIMILARITIES EVERYWHERE: CELESTE NG MEETS SHIRLEY JACKSON

    Comparative Literature is a strange discipline because it consists of seeing similarities between very dissimilar texts, usually written in different languages but also in the same language. The whole discipline depends on serendipity, as a particular scholar needs to think of particular connections that are not evident, a type of discovery that only happens quite…

  • PEQUEÑAS SIMILITUDES EN TODAS PARTES: CELESTE NG Y SHIRLEY JACKSON

    La Literatura Comparada es una disciplina extraña porque consiste en ver similitudes entre textos muy disímiles, generalmente escritos en diferentes idiomas pero también en el mismo idioma. Toda la disciplina depende de la serendipia, ya que el estudioso interesado necesita pensar en conexiones que no son evidentes, un tipo de descubrimiento que solo ocurre por…

  •  TRAINS AND OMNIBUSES: ON THE MEANS OF TRANSPORT IN FICTION

    As readers and spectators, we tend to think of the means of transport as background elements of moderate importance. Yet, the moment I do some digging, what emerges is a rather complex picture of their relevance in the stories we tell and consume.             I am thinking of this matter today because of two lectures.…