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 for free 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)).

  • NEW BOOK (AND MANIFESTO): DESAFÍOS A LA HETEROSEXUALIDAD OBLIGATORIA

    I have a new book out. It’s very small, only 84 pages, but it’s taken plenty of reading and plenty of thinking, so I thought I’d use this blog to publicise it a little bit. The volume is called Desafíos a la Heterosexualidad Obligatoria and it’s part of the enticing collection that Meri Torras is…

  • DEPRESSION LOOMS LARGE: MORE AND MORE PAYCUTS…

    I’m beginning to sound like a broken record but I guess this is yet another sign of my incipient depression. A few days after the Spanish elections the Catalan government insidiously announced yet another paycut for civil servants, something between 1 and 3% to be deducted off the extra month’s salary paid in June and…

  • DOING GENDER STUDIES: FOR MY MALE STUDENTS

    At the last count, the male students following actively my Victorian Literature subject are 9 in a class of 50 active students (by this I mean that about 10 more are registered but never show up). This is about 20%, slightly higher than in other courses I have taught, in which the proportion was usually…

  • EDITING CONVENTIONS: WHO CARES? (WE DO!)

    I’m taking a break from my main task today: going through the 49 paper proposals that my second-year students have sent me (I’ve managed 37 so far… yupiii!!! And it’s only 16:00). This is the first time they write an abstract, which makes their difficulties to firmly state what they aim at doing quite understandable.…

  • MR CLOONEY AND MR GRANT: ALONE (AND LOVING IT)

    This might be an example of intertextuality in the making. Or in hindsight. Also an example of how academics cannot really relax. For, I don’t know what nuclear physicists do for relaxation, but I tend to watch films, and, well, they make me think, an activity that often leads to writing papers. Or blog entries.…