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)).

  • RE-READING: THE BOTTOMLESS PIT

    As I age I understand less and less the mechanism by which some stories are instantly embedded in our brains and other pass through leaving no trace. I keep lists of the books that I read and the films that I see like Japanese tourists who take photos of everything to fix the memories of…

  • DON’T TOUCH MY HARRY!!: THE WRITER’S BATTLE WITH THE FANS

    I’m reading the Harry Potter saga again –for the third time around– in preparation for my elective subject next semester. Also the academic materials that I’m going to use as background reading, and which include the Casebook recently edited (2012) by Hallett and Huey. In this volume there’s a very interesting piece by Pamela Ingleton,…

  • TEN TIMES MORE MONEY: WHY BERKELEY IS BETTER THAN MY UNIVERSITY (BUT WE’RE NOT WORSE)

    Last week, during the opening of the current academic year, our Rector, Ferran Sancho, explained that the University of California at Berkeley, roughly the same size as UAB in students and staff, has a budget of 300 million euros –ours is 30 (and fast diminishing). Since then the sing-song ‘ten times more money’ has taken…

  • LOVING LOVE STORIES: CATFISH, LAUREN AND DEREK (AND NEW-STYLE PLATONIC LOVE)

    I simply love MTV’s series Catfish (Tuesdays 22:00). This is a series inspired by the eponymous 2010 documentary directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. The film focused on the romantic disappointment of Ariel’s brother, Yaniv (Niv), when he finds out that the pretty twenty-something woman he’s fallen in love with on the internet does…

  • SELF-PUBLICATION AND THE ‘NO CUENTA’ MANTRA

    Since I managed to open my website –despite the little technical help we get and the odd quirks of the DRUPAL programme– I’ve been wondering about its possibilities for self-publication. My institution insists that self-published work should go to its digital depository, yet where the actual file is placed is ultimately quite irrelevant. What matters…