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)).

  • THE PAYCUTS SEEN FROM THE OTHER SIDE: A FAMILY LUNCH

    I made the mistake of declaring to my family over lunch that I was very depressed as President Mas has decided to deduct yet another 5% off my wages, this time off the complement paid by the Generalitat (I’m a civil servant on the payroll of the Spanish Government). This unleashed not the sympathy one…

  • SPENDING MONEY ON DRAMA (WORKING OUT THE COST OF A SUBJECT)

    I’ll be teaching again next year the elective ‘English Theatre’ and I’m reconsidering the texts I used 2 years ago. In that edition I asked my students to read two anthologies, Grahame Whybrow’s Modern Drama: Plays of the ’80s and ’90s and Alekz Seirz’s Twenty-First Century British Plays (both Methuen). 10 plays in total, 36…

  • A SOCIOLOGY OF TEACHERS: ENGLISH STUDIES IN SPAIN

    To my surprise Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979, English translation 1984), based on field work in late 1960s and early 1970s France, still makes perfect sense today. I don’t know whether this is because Spain is till catching up with the France he portrays, or because, essentially, Europe’s patterns of consumption have not changed that much…

  • ON COPYRIGHT, VIRTUAL CAMPUS, CEDRO AND HARVARD

    CEDRO is the Spanish organisation that protects the copyright of writers on books (and music scores, I mean sheet music); it is analogous to SGAE, which protects performing artists. Recently, CEDRO has sued UAB for 1 million euros, accusing my university of not restricting at all book piracy in our virtual classrooms (see http://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20120411/54283660307/cedro-uab-fotocopias.html). They…

  • ‘IN THE VERY FIRST ROW OF THE SECOND-RATERS’: READING W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM’S OF HUMAN BONDAGE

    I have spent much of my time this long weekend glued to the 600 pages of W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage (1915). I picked up the yellowing, crumbling copy at UAB’s library to read for pleasure, after having read a while ago The Razor’s Edge (1944) –and yes, having seen the two film versions,…