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)).

  • MANUEL VÁZQUEZ MONTALBÁN, WHO COULD HAVE BEEN RAYMOND WILLIAMS

    An unexpected blessing of commuting by train to the UAB is that I get one hour a day for reading what I please. As I always carry a heavy bag and I still don’t have an e-book reader, I’m becoming an expert at choosing the slimmest, juiciest possible books (mostly from my local library, the…

  • PUZZLING OVER THE USE OF GUIDES AND GUIDELINES

    Now that everyone is marking papers and exams, some colleagues and myself discuss over lunch the function of guides and guidelines (yes, you, students, occupy our thoughts a great deal of our time). I’m using these two words to distinguish the documents that offer information on a whole subject, and that we call Teaching Guides,…

  • MARKING PAPERS… (IF YOU’RE A TEACHER, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!)

    I’m taking a break from marking the 39 papers (minimum 1,000 words – maximum 2,500 words) I need to mark by Thursday, unless I want to spoil my weekend once more (my Friday is busy with other academic activities). I’m about to fulfil my 15 paper quota for today, which is not too bad, and…

  • THE QUESTION OF AUTHORSHIP AND ‘THIRD-WORLD’ AUTOBIOGRAPHY (LE LY HAYSLIP’S MEMOIRS)

    I’m preparing my notes to teach Le Ly Hayslip’s memoirs, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (1989) and Child of War, Woman of Peace (1993), and I realise that defining authorship in them is quite complicated. Hayslip, born in Vietnam in 1949, moved to the USA in 1970, when she married Ed Munro, a civilian…

  • MARIO VARGAS LLOSA’S EL SUEÑO DEL CELTA: CONSIDERING WHAT THE NOBEL PRIZE MEANS

    First posting of the new year: happy 2011! I don’t wish to turn this blog into a space for reviewing but, as happens, I’ve been reading Vargas Llosa’s El sueño del celta (2010) and I do feel the need to vent my deep disappointment. You may recall from a recent post that I recommended this…