In this lecture at the midpoint of the course Professor Hungerford takes stock of the syllabus thus far and to come by laying out her guiding thesis of the Identity Plot, a rubric for understanding novels in the twentieth century as, she argues, the Marriage Plot is a rubric for understanding novels in the nineteenth century. Referring to examples throughout the syllabus, but especially Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior, Hungerford describes the overriding tendency of American novels written after 1945 to explore the tension between individual and collective identities and to interrogate the artistic and political stakes of competing notions of authenticity.

Reading assignment:

Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (1976)