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)).

  •  THE MEANING OF ‘WORK’: REFLECTIONS ON LABOUR

    Last week I confessed my gradual loss of enthusiasm over Anna Karenina, a novel whose last sections I mostly skipped. This week I confess that I had a similar problem with Studs Terkel’s Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974). This is a collection…

  • EL SIGNIFICADO DE ‘TRABAJO’: REFLEXIONES SOBRE EL EMPLEO

    La semana pasada confesé mi paulatina pérdida de entusiasmo por Anna Karenina, una novela cuyas últimas secciones me salté en su mayoría. Esta semana confieso que tuve un problema similar con Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974) de Studs Terkel. Se trata de…

  • LEGAL FICTIONS OF THE 19TH CENTURY: THE CASE OF ANNA KARENINA

    I must confess my total and utter failure to enjoy Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina (serialized 1875-1877 and printed in a single volume in 1878). I started with the customary patience I use when reading very long texts (1096 pages in my edition, the excellent 2000 translation by husband-and-wife team Richard Pevear and Larissa…

  • FICCIONES JURÍDICAS DEL SIGLO XIX: EL CASO DE ANNA KARENINA

    Debo confesar mi total y absoluto fracaso a la hora de disfrutar de la novela clásica de León Tolstoi Anna Karenina (publicada por entregas entre 1875 y 1877 e impresa en un solo volumen en 1878). Empecé con la paciencia habitual que empleo cuando leo textos muy largos (1096 páginas en mi edición, la excelente…

  • A MUCH DEEPER DAMAGE: LOSING ACADEMIC LIFE TO AI

    I was supposed to take part in a seminar next week, which I’ll have to miss, with a talk about how to use AI correctly. In this talk I was going to describe, once more, how the late Iain M. Banks presents AI in his Culture novels (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series).             The Culture is a post-scarcity,…