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 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…

  • DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS: THE STRANGEST GENRE

    Doctoral dissertations are the strangest genre because they’re both the record of a process of learning and its final product. PhD candidates are so overwhelmed by the effort made throughout the years that they don’t seem to notice this particularity until, precisely, the time of the ‘viva’ (or ‘defence,’ as we call it in Spain…

  • THE HANDSOME ACADEMIC AND THE WOMAN WRITER

    My good friend José Francisco Fernández Sánchez, from the University of Almería, emails me to announce good news: the volume gathering together the complete short stories by Margaret Drabble, A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, is just out (see http://www.amazon.com/Day-Life-Smiling-Woman-Complete/dp/0547550405). He’s the proud, happy editor. Congratulations!! José Francisco includes in his message…

  • A LINK TO AN INTERVIEW IN A GREAT BLOG!

    I’ve been interviewed by Raúl Calvo for his blog, El cinéfago de la Laguna Negra, and here’s the link: http://elcinefagodelalagunanegra.blogspot.com/2011/04/sara-contra-los-monstruos.html Enjoy!!