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)).

  • IN MEMORIAM FÉLIX ERNESTO CHÁVEZ: AT A LOSS FOR WORDS

    Today we have learned that our dear colleague Félix Ernesto Chávez, a member of our research group ‘Body and Textuality,’ was brutally murdered last Monday in the course of a burglary in México DC. Félix had arrived just two weeks ago to teach a course at UNAM and was staying with relatives. A man who…

  • THE TEACHING GUIDE (OR SYLLABUS BOLOGNA-STYLE): OBJECTIONS AND BENEFITS

    I do know that the correct word to name the document that describes a subject is “syllabus” but I’m using “teaching guide” here on purpose to discuss the new kind of syllabus we’ve been using since the beginning of our degree, three academic years ago. As degree Coordinator I’m facing now the daunting prospect of…

  • A LITERATURE QUIZ (HERE WE GO AGAIN)

    I’m tempted to cut’n’paste my entry for 28 May 2011, written after marking a disastrous Literature quiz based on studying our handbook Introduction to English Literature. Yet, re-reading it, I notice that things are even worse this time around as, instead of 50 titles, the quiz covered only 20 –presumably those any self-respecting student of…

  • A VIVA IN BRITAIN: COMPARING EXPERIENCES

    I was quite surprised when a UAB doctoral student in the ‘Arts Escèniques’ programme run by the Catalan Department asked me to be the second internal examiner of a board that should meet at Warwick University. Surprised because a) I didn’t know her, b) I do not specialise in Theatre Studies (though I teach Theatre…

  • FINDING AN AUDIENCE: SMALL JOURNALS AND MELVYN BRAGG

    I was leaving for home after a long, tiring day, depressed as I am these days at the thought of how hard the university is being hit by the current crisis, when a smiling colleague stopped me in the middle of the corridor. She’s an associate that teaches English Language and with whom I’ve only…