19. Philip Roth, The Human Stain

The American Novel Since 1945 (ENGL 291)

In this lecture on The Human Stain, Professor Hungerford traces the ways that Roth's novel conforms to and pushes beyond the genre she calls the Identity Plot. Exploring the various ways that race can be construed as category, mark, biology, or performance, the novel ultimately construes the defining characteristic of its protagonist's race to be its very concealment. Secrecy is, for Roth, the source of identity and the driving force behind desire and narrative.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Roth's Mundane Modern Context: Historical Markers of the 1990s
05:59 - Chapter 2. Roth's Identity Plot: The Performance of the Self
16:36 - Chapter 3. Classification as Definition
21:25 - Chapter 4. The Body as Sign: Moments of Irreducible Otherness
27:18 - Chapter 5. Speech and Secrecy: Locating Identity in the Interval
41:31 - Chapter 6. Desire and Difference

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

This course was recorded in Spring 2008.