Material Detail

This video was recorded at ENGL 291 - The American Novel Since 1945. 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. Reading assignment: Philip Roth, The Human Stain (2000)

Disciplines:

• Humanities  / Comparative Literature and Classics