The Ian Watt lecture in the History and Theory of the Novel
Identification: A Defense
May 3, 5:30-7pm
Reception at 5:00pm

Invited Speaker:

Rita Felski
The William R. Kenan Jr. Professorship of English at the University of Virginia, former editor of New Literary History, and also currently Niels Bohr Professor at the University of Southern Denmark (2016-2021)

This talk offers a defense of identification and a reconsideration of character. It argues that identifying is a more complex and variable process than it is often taken to be. Disentangling four strands of identification—alignment, allegiance, recognition, and empathy—it expands on their differing entailments and proposes that identification shapes academic as well as lay reading. Identifying with characters, meanwhile, overlaps with attachments to an author, a star, or a style. Characters are portmanteau creatures, assembled out of disparate materials drawn from fiction and life. Rather than being restricted to a single text, they can serve as nodes in many networks. They are distributed, adapted, and mediated. Their presence can be exceptionally vivid, yet it is painstakingly composed.