As a consequence of a post I published here last Christmas I have finally embarked on the very difficult mission of teaching J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series next year. Yes, very difficult, believe me. Since the subject is formally ‘Cultural Studies’ I have decided to use the first few weeks for an overview of this […]
If I had a euro for every time a student has handed in an essay with no title, I’d be… in less fear of the current crisis. Not rich but possibly in possession of, say, a much better handbag. Actually, if I think about it, there are two variations to this problem: essays with no […]
In the last few weeks both my UAB and my UOC students have been learning (English) poetry. To my dismay and that of my teaching colleagues, even though we have insisted that they should NOT produce text commentaries and we have provided them with samples of the kind of argumentative essay we want to see […]
My colleague David Owen passes us, Literature teachers, two interesting links. Both refer to a recent critique of the usefulness of university lectures by Wikipedia’s founder: “Jimmy Wales: Boring university lectures ‘are doomed’” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22160988) and “Are university lectures doomed?” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/05/debate-university-lectures-doomed-philip-hensher-john-mullan). The main gist of Wales’s argumentation is that increasingly popular online higher education will kill […]
The students’ Assembly of the Facultat asks us, teachers, to use some time this week in class to explain to students what worries us most about the current state of the university. I will do so tomorrow but I have also decided to leave here in my blog the snapshot of what things look like […]
My colleagues in ‘20th century English Literature’ (first-year) and myself have decided to use one spare week that we programmed after the unit on British Poetry for songs. I opened a Forum for students to contribute songs that they found interesting because of the lyrics but since the messages are trickling rather than pouring down […]
A very good-looking male friend of mine from a Southern Spanish university tells me that, to his deep chagrin and mortification, a student (male or female he doesn’t know), mentioned his biceps –oh my God!– as the strongest point of the English Studies BA degree for which he teaches. (Yes, we teachers gossip all the […]
My previous post (sorry it was so long) leads to this second post on teacher mobility, also connected with the Wert report. El Diario Montañés, published an article on 24 February with the title “Rector UAB: el sueldo de los docentes es poco competitivo para atraer talento” (http://www.eldiariomontanes.es/agencias/20130224/mas-actualidad/sociedad/rector-uab-sueldo-docentes-poco_201302241101.html). In this article, Ferran Sancho, interviewed by […]
APPLYING CULTURAL STUDIES TO OUR LOCAL UNIVERSITIES: IT’S URGENT [In case you’re wondering, yes, two posts today – I haven’t been writing much recently and the ideas pile up…] I’m going to refer here again to the 84-page report that a committee of professors submitted last 15 February to Minister Wert, for the reform of […]
Exactly a year ago tomorrow I published a post called ‘A Striking Strike’ as we, students and teachers, were also on strike, like today. I wrote then and I repeat now that I’m not joining the strike as (I’m quoting myself): “a) my not teaching students for one day does not bother anyone, [much less […]