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 DAY I THREW A PAIR OF SLIPPERS AT A STUDENT IN CLASS (AND HE SEEMED TO ENJOY IT!)

    Three of my first year students were supposed to offer a dramatised reading of Pygmalion’s Act IV. In it, after her successful impersonation of a lady at a posh party, Eliza quarrels bitterly with her teacher Higgins because she thinks he’s not considered in depth what’s to become of her once this odd experiment is…

  • WHO’S ELIZA’S MYSTERY STYLIST? (COLONEL PICKERING’S QUEER ROLE)

    I show to my first year students the glamourous Ascot sequence of My Fair Lady and the moment I write ‘Cecil Beaton’ on the blackboard, I wonder once more why Shaw neglects to explain in further detail Col. Pickering’s role in Eliza’s transformation. We do know he is the one paying for the whole experiment,…

  • ESPABILATION SKILLS, OR HOW TO MOTIVATE PASSIVE STUDENTS (part 2)

    This is a regular teaching day for me this semester: 8:30-10:00, 20th Century Literature (compulsory), I face my sleepy-eyed, unmotivated first year students: 50% attendance, of those in class 50% don’t take notes (apparently they don’t even bring paper to class) and 50% don’t even bother to conceal their boredom (the ones not taking notes…

  • ESPABILATION SKILLS, OR HOW TO MOTIVATE PASSIVE STUDENTS (part 1)

    I spent 4 hours last Friday in a seminar on formative continuous assessment applied to university teaching. The seminar, run by Joan Simón, a Pharmacy senior lecturer at UB (http://joansimon.nom.es/cms3/), was very good, and served partly as a therapy session, which we, first year teachers down in the trenches, need badly. As usual, though, I…

  • NOW I GET IT!! (WHY THE MAs ARE REALLY BEING DISMANTLED)

    I have heard many voices explaining that the cost of the MAs we established barely 5 years ago is too high for the Catalan university to maintain. I could not quite understand this as our now dying MA ‘Advanced English Studies: Literature and Culture’ (slashed for having less than 10 students) cost more or less…