I have written here at least twice about introductions. Back in 2011 (how time passes!!), I wrote a post about the introductions to British drama, which I was then teaching, and then in 2017 another post about Scottish literature. My point was similar and it is still similar today: no matter how brief the introduction, […]
[No, I’m not writing about Donald Trump’s victory. I don’t agree with any of the analyses I have read and there will be time enough to consider the catastrophes that his cabinet will cause in the USA and around the world. If we survive.] A couple of my students asked me how come I have […]
When we started working on the new 2021 syllabus, my Literature colleagues and I came to the conclusion that our students have too little contact with the contemporary world. Our undergrads take in the first year an Introduction to English Literature, which basically covers the British and Irish 20th century, beginning with James Joyce’s “The […]
Memory is a funny thing. I have been digging into my CV to prepare this post and what I have found does not quite match my recollections. I was under the impression that I have been teaching Victorian Literature every year since I was hired in 1991, except the year that I spent in Scotland […]
Even though I have been teaching H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885) for a few years now, it seems I have not written about this novel here. A bit odd. Since I am most likely saying goodbye to it, this is perhaps the right moment to discuss its racist, colonial content, the issue on […]
I have just marked 70 paper proposals that my second-year Victorian Literature students have submitted and since the feedback I need to offer might be useful beyond my class, I’m offering it here as a sort of open tutorial. In our English Studies BA we start using secondary sources in the first year, but […]