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)).

  • ATTACKING ACADEMESE IN THE HUMANITIES: THE HARD SF VIEW (ON GREG EGAN’S TERANESIA)

    Reading the SF novel Teranesia (1999) by Australian novelist Greg Egan, I’m surprised to find an anti-academese critique embedded in a key subplot. The protagonist Prabir, a teenager, and his younger sister Madhusree lose their parents in the first segment of the book. The couple, Indian scientists doing research on a mysterious butterfly in a…

  • GIVING ADVICE ON ACADEMIC CAREERS: AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK

    In the last month I have given advice to three students who’d like to pursue an academic career and, to be honest, I didn’t know what to tell them. The easiest part is describing the mechanics of doctoral programmes and the accreditation system. The hardest part is assessing for them their chances to ever get…

  • FANTASIZING ALTERNATIVE FATHER FIGURES: THE WAY, WAY BACK

    Just three posts ago I wrote about reviewing in websites like Amazon or IMBD. Today I’m opening this post with my eyebrows raised because the IMDB reviews I’ve just been reading for a film I enjoyed last night (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash’s The Way, Way Back, 2013) seem to describe ten different films. The…

  • DUBBING: THE IGNORED ACTORS

    When I included the film adaptation of Harry Potter as a topic for my course I intended to consider how the movies betray or enhance the text –yes, the old-fashioned fidelity criterion. Also, I wanted to examine the very British cast. However, I ended transforming the two planned lectures into far more active sessions on,…

  • THE MATTER OF SCOTLAND AND WHY SCOTLAND MATTERS

    Twenty years ago, I spent some time in Scotland on a scholarship as a doctoral student at the University of Stirling (though I eventually moved to Glasgow). I have kept since then an interest in Scottish Literature (you’ve read here about my beloved Iain M. Banks), and, intermittently, in the matter of Scottish independence. I…