A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of helping to consolidate the academic career of a brilliant young scholar, Pablo Gómez Muñoz, whose excellent volume Science Fiction Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Futures, Cosmopolitan Concerns (Routledge, 2023), I earnestly recommend. Pablo, who has been working for some years now at the Universidad […]
Today I’m writing a sort of metablogging post, for two reasons: I wish to comment on my most recent book, Passionate Professing: The Context and Practice of Teaching Literature, which contains a selection of posts published here, and I have just been invited to write an article on the experience of writing this blog for […]
This week we have held in my Department the 10th TELLC (Teaching English Language, Literature and Culture) workshop. This yearly meeting, which I set up after my time as BA Coordinator and still run, is aimed at discussing our experiences as teachers in all the areas and degrees of the Department. The presentations are supposed […]
I take my inspiration for this post from an article by Belén de Marcos for 20 Minutos, of 31st December: “La crisis ‘postcarrera,’ una realidad que sufren muchos jóvenes” (“The ‘post-degree’ crisis, a reality many young persons suffer”). The article has a curious subtitle, a quote from one of the persons interviewed: “Te hacen creer […]
The conversation around students’ manifest absence from the classroom has been making louder noises this month, when diverse reports have been issued. In The Times Higher Education, Paul Basken announced on December 6 that “Class attendance in US universities [is] ‘at record low’” due to “online hype, mental stress, adjunct reliance and job-centric mindsets.” Academics, […]
PISA, its official website informs “is the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.” Although the report for the 2022 tests shows that Spain has obtained the same results as in 2018 on the three skills tested, these […]
Last Tuesday I attended a lecture on dystopia in film and TV series taught by a brilliant Turkish visiting professor, which was also attended by four other university professors, including the one who had invited the visitor. I won’t name the university, a renowned public university, but will note that the students (about 20?) are […]
As readers and spectators, we tend to think of the means of transport as background elements of moderate importance. Yet, the moment I do some digging, what emerges is a rather complex picture of their relevance in the stories we tell and consume. I am thinking of this matter today because of two lectures. […]
As I announced in the first post of this year, I have launched a new edition of the Department’s Book Club. My collaborator, Felicity Hand, and myself visited a series of classrooms a couple of weeks ago to present the club, and sent all the students an email message through the BA and MA degree […]
Happy new academic year! May it brings plenty of positive energy for teachers and students, and dispels all the dark clouds of anxiety and depression that plagued so many people last year. My first post of this new year deals with my Department’s book club. We have been running a club for a few years […]