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)).

  • ISHIGURO & GARLAND: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS (ABOUT A VIDEO)

    I’m writing a chapter for a collective book, edited by José Francisco Fernández Sánchez, on how contemporary British writers have progressed since the publication of Blincoe & Thorne’s anthology (and manifesto) All Hail the New Puritans (2000). I chose (I begged…) to write about Alex Garland, as I’m very much interested in how he’s straddling…

  • (ACADEMIC) DIVA IN TOWN: ABOUT NOT PAYING HOMAGE

    SHE is in town, the one who made all that possibly with the publication of that book back 20 years ago, invited once more to illuminate us (at great expense, with public money). I saw her years ago, one among a crowd of adoring admirers and I liked her very much because she deflated her…

  • WHEN IT’S BAD, IT’S WORSE: ARTHUR MILLER ALL MY SONS

    I believe that when theatre disappoints it does do with the same intensity as when it pleases: very much. This is not quite the same in the case of cinema, I’m not sure why; somehow, bad films are soon forgotten, whereas bad plays, always harder to follow than films, remain stuck in our memories. I’m…

  • A FEMINIST DILEMMA: THAT MAN AT THE CONFERENCE…

    I attended a few weeks ago a very interesting interdisciplinary conference on gender, development and textuality at a university near Barcelona. As usual whenever gender is discussed, there were very few men, which is why that particular man soon caught my attention. Tall, wearing salwar kameez and cap, his face decorated with a longish beard…

  • READING ROGER CASEMENT AT LAST! (AND QUESTIONING LITERATURE)

    I first mentioned Roger Casement here in relation to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (see entry for 12-XII) and, later, in my review of Mario Vargas Llosa’s El sueño del Celta (2-I), a novel based on his tragic life. In the meantime, I have spent 60 euros of public money to purchase for the UAB library…