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)).

  • BLAST ME IF YOU WANT (BUT I DON’T UNDERSTAND SARAH KANE…)

    Yesterday four students offered us Scene 1 and Scene 2 of Sarah Kane’s Blasted, with a courage and enthusiasm far beyond my expectations. Josep and Helena, Julia and Isabella played Ian and Cate, with Julia doubling as the Soldier. To begin with, in Scene 1 we had a young couple (happy, I assume!) playing the…

  • MISSING THE PUNCH LINE: TERRY JOHNSON’S HYSTERIA AND BEN TRAVERS’S FARCE ROOKERY NOOK

    Last week we witnessed in class the struggle, brilliantly solved, of four students –Sara, David, Carla and, secondarily, María– with Terry Johnson’s demanding intellectual farce Hysteria (1993). They made the most of a plot which narrates Freud’s morphine-induced circular dream (or nightmare); in it, his subconscious or, rather, his conscience embodied by a naked woman,…

  • AESTHETIC EMOTION ON THE STAGE (THANK YOU, KYLIE MINOGUE!!)

    Two years ago I had the great pleasure of writing with my friend Gerardo Rodríguez a paper on Kylie Minogue, which we presented at the 2009 AEDEAN at Cádiz. Yesterday, we both had the pleasure of seeing Kylie perform here in Barcelona to a full Palau Sant Jordi (her boyfriend, top model Andrés Velencoso, included!!!).…

  • LIKE A CROWDED PARTY: READING INTRODUCTIONS (TO BRITISH THEATRE)

    Introductions to particular literary periods, genres or schools make me as nervous as a party where I don’t know anyone: I want to meet everyone but I know that I’ll end up mixing up faces and stories and making serious gaffes (um, same problem with academic conferences, apologies to all concerned…). I’m currently going through…

  • TOP GIRL PERFORMERS IN CLASS

    This week the experiment of having students perform scenes from a selection of contemporary British plays in class has started… with top results!! The first texts were Act I and Act III of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls and I can only say that the women students playing the roles turned out to be top performers…