[I pretty much doubt that our busy Dean, Teresa Cabré –just re-elected– reads my blog, yet here’s my open letter for her (just in case, you never know).] Dear Dean, As I’m sure you know very well from personal experience, the ‘Facultat’ decided in time immemorial (before my time as a student) to start lectures […]
One of the wonders of teaching is that one never stops learning. Here’s proof. I’ve been teaching my first year students an introduction to the short story, based on Mansfield (“Bliss”), Joyce (“The Sisters”) and Woolf (“Kew Gardens”). I insisted that the Modernist short story is only one branch of the modern short story and […]
They say that envy is the national Spanish sin (avarice would be the Catalan one). This week I’ve used my evenings to read, out of envy, María Dueñas’s best-selling novel El tiempo entre costuras (2009). Why the envy? Well, Dueñas is one of us: a teacher at the English Department of the Universidad de Murcia. […]
Yesterday the public Catalan universities went on strike against the too many budget cuts that we’re suffering. I didn’t join the strike as a) my not teaching students for one day does not bother anyone, b) I’m sick and tired of giving back more and more money every month to the Government(s) between the pay […]
[Last entry: 19 February – um, yes, it’s the beginning of the semester, a mad time until the subjects get themselves running and students find their places… Difficult to put aside 60 minutes for a blog entry… yet sanity calls!!] Last week I produced a chronology of the first four decades of the 20th century […]
I have started a new edition of our first year subject ‘20th century Literature’ and, as usual, I’m mystified by how untidy the labels used to describe it are. Not that Metaphysical or Romantic are particularly tidy, either, which sets me thinking about how and why such a mess has been made of organizing (English) […]
My colleague David Owen has often heard me predict that soon enough at least part of our academic work will be eventually self-published on our websites. This is why he emailed me a very juicy article by Dave Lee about “The authors who are going it alone online – and winning” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16469000). The article highlights […]
I see someone carrying a bag with a Spanish brand name on it –Massimo Dutti?– followed by the word ‘since’ and a year number. I cringe, almost outwardly. A web in Spanish announces the new collection ‘Be my Valentine by Bershka’ and I double cringe (I heard someone described on Tele5 as a very intelligent […]
In my Department, since more and more staff are woefully underpaid provisional part-time associate teachers, there are fewer and fewer of us, tenured teachers, who can do the inevitable admin work. This is why I could not reject my appointment as Coordinator of our English Studies BA-style degree. For two years, possibly three, which would […]
These days the Armenian genocide is back on the news thanks to the law passed by the French Senate criminalising its denial (see, for instance, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16677986). This law, proposed by Sarkozy’s party and sanctioned by him as President, is quite similar to the corresponding German law that makes it a criminal offence to deny the […]