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)).

  • ONE MORE SLAP IN THE FACE: THE GENERALITAT ANNOUNCES THE DOWNSIZING OF THE TENURED STAFF IN CATALAN UNIVERSITIES

    I grab a coffee to start my day, sit in front of the TV to watch the news for a few minutes and this hits me in the face: the Generalitat announces plans to cut from 70% down to 40% the percentage of tenured staff in Catalan universities (see http://www.3cat24.cat/noticia/1225786/barcelones/El-govern-vol-reduir-en-un-30-els-professors-universitaris-amb-placa-fixa). First, I panic thinking they’ll…

  • FORCED ENTERTAINMENT (THE THEATRE COMPANY, NOT A UNIVERSITY LECTURE…)

    Yesterday I had the good fortune of seeing the British theatre company Forced Entertainment http://www.forcedentertainment.com here in Barcelona’s CCCB… and for just 7 euros!!! What a luxury, and what a beautiful way to close the great experience that teaching contemporary British theatre has been this semester. In case you’ve never heard of them, Tim Etchell’s…

  • RAISING MY QUIZZICAL EYEBROW (ABOUT A LITERATURE QUIZ)

    Yes, I’m always complaining, I know. I wish I could say that all the first-year students that took the English Literature quiz last Thursday passed it with flying colours. The truth is, mark this, that only 16 out of 59 managed to score at least 50 points (out of 100). What was the quiz about?…

  • THE HANDBOOK OF THE PHD DISSERTATION SUPERVISOR: IS THERE ONE?

    This cruel month of May is turning out to be quite peculiar in my academic life as regards doctoral dissertations. Today is 23, and in the three weeks of May I’ve gone through: an examining board for a dissertation supervised by someone else, the defence (or viva) of the second PhD dissertation I’ve supervised, the…

  • PIERRE BAYARD’S HOW TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS YOUR’VE NEVER READ: IS IT REALLY TONGUE-IN-CHEEK?

    (A brief note to say that this week-long absence from this blog feels much longer. May and not April is the cruellest month, if we judge by the overwhelming –or underwhelming– feeling that Spring is here, classes soon to end but pressure on our shoulders is higher than ever. Every conversation with a colleague ends…