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)).

  • ACQUIRING AN ACADEMIC BIBLIOGRAPHIC CULTURE: SOME TIPS

    My second-year students need to write a paper on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, in which they must cite a minimum of three secondary sources. I give them a list of 23 topics from which they can choose, with the only restriction that only a maximum of 3 students can choose the same topic. In this…

  • CÓMO ADQUIRIR UNA CULTURA BIBLIOGRÁFICA ACADÉMICA: ALGUNOS CONSEJOS

    Mis estudiantes de segundo año tienen que escribir un trabajo sobre Great Expectations de Charles Dickens, en el que necesitan citar un mínimo de tres fuentes secundarias. Les doy una lista de 23 temas entre los que pueden elegir, con la única restricción de que solo un máximo de 3 estudiantes puede elegir el mismo…

  • ON STUDENTS’ ABSENCE FROM THE CLASSROOM: BEGINNING TO WORRY

    Whereas my MA students rarely skip classes and only do so for justified reasons, I cannot make sense of the attendance pattern in my BA class. There are 63 students officially registered, of whom 58 appear to be following the course according to the exercises handed in and our online activities. However, classroom attendance varies…

  • ON THE EXPERIENCE OF SUPERVISING DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS (WITH AN APOLOGY)

    I have written so far two posts on the matter of supervising PhD students (see “A doctoral student abandons: At a loss what to advise…” of 2014, and “Supervising doctoral students: A complicated task” of 2015). Actually, I have published three more posts on doctoral students, but these two are most directly connected with the…

  • SOBRE LA EXPERIENCIA DE DIRIGIR TESIS DOCTORALES (CON UNA DISCULPA)

    He escrito hasta ahora dos entradas sobre el tema de la supervisión de estudiantes de doctorado (ver “A doctoral student abandons: At a loss what to advise…” de 2014, y “Supervising doctoral students: A complicated task” de 2015). En realidad, he publicado tres entradas más sobre los estudiantes de doctorado, pero estas dos están más…