ENGL 291: The American Novel Since 1945
Lecture 19 - Philip Roth, The Human Stain. 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. (from oyc.yale.edu)
| Lecture 19 - Philip Roth, The Human Stain |
| Time | Lecture Chapters |
| [00:00:00] | 1. Roth's Mundane Modern Context: Historical Markers of the 1990s |
| [00:05:59] | 2. Roth's Identity Plot: The Performance of the Self |
| [00:16:36] | 3. Classification as Definition |
| [00:21:25] | 4. The Body as Sign: Moments of Irreducible Otherness |
| [00:27:18] | 5. Speech and Secrecy: Locating Identity in the Interval |
| [00:41:31] | 6. Desire and Difference |
| References |
| Lecture 19 - Philip Roth, The Human Stain Instructor: Professor Amy Hungerford. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov]. |
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