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)).

  • SIZE MATTERS, AGAIN: THE LENGTH AND DURATION OF NOVELS

    Just by sheer coincidence my first and my last post this month have to do with time and how we employ it in consuming fictions. I wrote on 1st September about whether investing so many hours on watching one of those US TV series so popular today is worth it. I argued that this is…

  • BACK TO HARRY POTTER ONCE MORE: PUBLISHING UNDERGRAD STUDENTS’ WORK

    Back on May 12 I published a post commenting on my students collective volume, Addictive and Wonderful: Reading the Harry Potter Series (https://ddd.uab.cat/record/118225). Today, I’m announcing the publication of our second collective volume, Charming and Bewitching: Considering the Harry Potter Series (https://ddd.uab.cat/record/122987/). The elective I taught last Spring, ‘Cultural Studies in English: The Case of…

  • CELEBRATING BRITISH DEMOCRACY: TOWARDS A NEW UNITED KINGDOM

    It is always thrilling to witness a key historical moment, and today it is one. The results of the Scottish referendum on independence mark, as many political commentators have noted, a decisive turning point in the History of the United Kingdom, which will have to revise urgently the conditions of the union (including, most likely,…

  • THE USE OF TIMELINES: ABOUT PRODUCING ONE (ON WOMEN AND FEMINISM IN SPAIN)

    I am very fond of timelines. I find that one of the problems of the post-traditional model of education is that it has condemned memorizing as a useless nuisance. This leads to a great deal of imprecision regarding exact historical dates, which in its turn produces a hazy impression of historical periods. Without learning particular…

  • WHAT WOULD PROSPERO SAY?: GIVING BOOKS AWAY

    Last year a lecturer from a Scottish university, where I’d been a doctoral student, emailed me after more than a decade without contact. She explained to me that she was retiring (to Mallorca) and looking for a home for her collection of books on Gothic. Would the UAB be interested? Oh, my!, I thought, but…