Carta a China

Dear Wanlin,
I'm a bit late in my answer but I've been doing homework! Besides, my first semester is really hectic, I concentrate all of my year's teaching there, so the second semester if almost sabbatical in comparison. Well, it's one of the strange things one can do in the Spanish university, and it would suit me perfectly if I were a travelling man, but you see I'm not really that active that way, Prague was an exception! And Beatriz, who's the one who drags me along to conferences, tells me she ("we") won't be going to the Paris conference next semester, so I'm quiet in Spain for the moment. Anyway, thanks for the encouragement to go to China some day, and who knows! John Pier always tells me I should do that, and my sister-in-law, who teaches in Madrid, has also been there several times and she tells me the same. I'm too much of a couch potato academic... or well, a "cyberspace" one if you prefer a more positive and trendy perspective! Pity you can't access some of these repositories from China. Do you use your university's repository, or is there a more general academic platform you use there? I use too many of those perhaps, now (apart from Academia and Researchgate, and SSRN, and well, my university's repository) I have just opened an account at another repository/academic network sponsored by the MLA. Humanities Commons it's called. Well, I'll keep you informed if I find it's worth using. For the time being, I'll just give you one other link, seeing that you can't access the other ones, it's a bit out of date but I'll keep working on it, it's a website at my university with links to some papers and things, here:

 http://www.unizar.es/departamentos/filologia_inglesa/garciala/publicaciones.html

or in short here:

http://tinyurl.com/escritos

I'll have to bring it up to date. But it's such time-consuming work, keeping up so many webs, and blogs (six or seven of them) and fixing broken links... Anyway, most of my publications are in Spanish so that's not very helpful. But I did send a couple of weeks ago a handful of offprints with articles in English. Old papers, but anyway :) Most of them you can find in the website above. And then I also sent the narratology book, I waited to see if I could enclose a beautiful postcard of Zaragoza, but I couldn't find it! Postcards have disappeared from the market, or at least from my neighbourhood! The times they are a-changed. Well, I included a tourist brochure anyway, if by chance you decide to join the next Zaragoza conference. My department organizes a conference almost every year on literary and cultural topicis, and film too, in the anglophone area I mean, there are plenty of other conferences in humanities too of course, Zaragoza is pretty active in that respect. I'll send you news on these events as they come along, "j.i.c.". As to journals, our department also publishes a journal, with a horrible name, it's called "Miscellany", with two issues a year, one's in linguistics and language teaching, the other in literature and cultural studies, in English I mean. It's peer-reviewd, published online free-access, it doesn't charge fees to authors (& those horrible things which are getting more and more common!) so it's a pretty good choice if you decide to send papers to a European ("continental") journal. I'll send you a back issue. Another good choice would be the journal of the Spanish Society for Anglo-American Studies, AEDEAN. It's called Atlantis. For some reason the server's down just now 😟 but you can see the contents etc. here: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=176 These would be good choices. Well it's not as good as the PMLA or Critical Inquiry, but hey.... Well, I'm leaving you for today. Tell me 2 things - 1, if you do receive this e-mail, I had some trouble last time using gmail and I used my university email system then, and now I don't know which one's best. - 2, in a few weeks' time perhaps, if you do receive TWO separate envelopes, the one with offprints etc., and another one with the Narratology book (the Longman reader, well now it's Routledge I think). I have so little faith in surface mail. And in email too... And I hope you have managed to find some little place at the Montreal conference, you'll be sure to enjoy the trip and get profit from it. By the way, I forgot I Prague I think, to express my admiration for your proficiency in English. That's because I've never seen an Englishman (or Spaniard, or Westerner) proficient in Chinese... maybe they do exist, but not with your level I don't think so! Have you had "extremely long" stays in the USA, or any other English-speaking country, or have you developed in your own department an English-speaking environment, 24/7? Otherwise.... Well, tell me, I'm curious as well as admiring!
And greetings from Zaragoza,
JAGL

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