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)).

  • GOODBYE, MAGGIE: CONSIDERING THE LEGACY OF MARGARET THATCHER

    Not even on the day of her flamboyant funeral have the Spanish media managed to pronounce Margaret Thatcher’s surname correctly: it’s ‘zatcha’ (more or less), not ‘tacher’. I suppose that the visual similarities with the word ‘teacher’ to our boorish, monolingual Spanish eyes are responsible for the habitual mispronunciation but this is nonetheless annoying. It’s…

  • TO ‘LA BUTANERA’ (AND THOSE CONFUSED WOMEN WHO THINK THAT ALL TYPES OF FEMINISM ARE FINE)

    On 8th March, International Women’s Day, a group of women at my Facultat, led I believe by Prof. Teresa Camps, decided to decorate a very visible wall in one of the main corridors with four photos (about 50 x 50 cms) of the same series. The black and white photos show a young white woman,…

  • ON OUR STUDENTS’ AVERAGE COMMAND OF ENGLISH (AND WHAT THE AUTHORITIES THINK THEY SHOULD KNOW)

    As La Vanguardia, among other newspapers, published this week only one third of all new students in Catalan universities possess a sufficient command of English (that is to say, B2 or First Certificate; see www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20130406/54372064211/universitarios-acceden-sin-nivel-minimo-ingles.html). The local government’s Department of Economy and Knowledge (‘Coneixement’), which also runs Catalan universities, is planning to make First Certificate…

  • ENJOYING IAIN (M.) BANKS TO THE LAST: A SAD ANNOUNCEMENT

    I was planning to make something special of my posting number 200 but the unexpected has taken me over. Completely. Today I have sent an abstract for a paper on Iain M. Banks’s The Hydrogen Sonata (2012), a novel I have discussed here (see 1-XI-2012, LET’S SUBLIME: A POLITICAL READING FOR THE HYDROGEN SONATA). The…

  • THOSE BICEPS, OH MY GOD!: WHAT SOME STUDENTS VALUE IN TEACHERS (HOPEFULLY JUST A FEW)

    A very good-looking male friend of mine from a Southern Spanish university tells me that, to his deep chagrin and mortification, a student (male or female he doesn’t know), mentioned his biceps –oh my God!– as the strongest point of the English Studies BA degree for which he teaches. (Yes, we teachers gossip all the…