Universitatea “Ovidius” Constanţa

Facultatea de Litere
Aleea Universităţii nr. 1 Constanţa 8700, ROMANIA
Tel. 0040 241 551773 Fax. 0040 241 511512

Prof. univ. dr. Eduard Vlad

Catedra de engleza si germana
MA programme in Anglo-American Studies

CONSTRUCTIONS OF IDENTITY AND IDENTITY THEORIES IN 20TH CENTURY

TEXTS OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD

Course description
The concept of identity has gained currency in a wide variety of fields: contemporary
political discourse, sociological and psychological theories attempting to create models of
the self. Identity theories and social identity theories describe an active engagement with
experience to define oneself in relation to individual agency and social structures, to
describe feelings of belonging or estrangement, to express solidarity and/or resistance.
They also take into account the findings of psychoanalysis and feminism, as well as what
has come to be called identity politics. The course aims at giving a survey of the
interdisciplinary field spanned by identity theories, making a comprehensinve
bibliography available to the MA students. It goes on to apply some of the concepts,
distinctions, views, and overall theories to the reading of a number of literary texts from
the second half of the 20th century.

Objectives
To promote understanding of the concepts that underlie common interpretive and critical
undertakings in the interdisciplinary field of identity theories
To encourage MA students to relate theoretical texts on identity to literary texts, to
comment on them using the useful terminology and approaches prompted by these texts
- to encourage students to deal with primary and secondary sources, going from reading,
research to essay writing, a necessary step towards the work they will do on their
graduation dissertation.

Course evaluation
The students are invited to respond to the literary, as well as the theoretical texts in the
bibliography. The classroom activities will provide them with means of expressing their
personal response to the texts and of getting feedback before the final assessment session.
This will become apparent in the notes they will take, reflecting their critical reading of
the bibliography and their classroom response. The final assessment session will be based
on a) the files the students will have completed and b) the way they support, defend,
comment on the information and attitudes contained in the personal files.

1
1. The optimistic grand narrative of the self and of identity; the liberal humanist self
vs. the psychoanalytic models (Freud, Jung)
Mary Klages, Norman Cantor
origins of p.; the early Freud and depth psychology, the later Freud and cultural theory,
Jung (Norman Cantor)

2. identity and the later psychoanalists

Erik Erikson’s ego identity (Jane Kroger)
the radical Freudians, the American school of ego psychology, psychoanalytic
structuralism, radical British theorists, the psychoanalytic heritage (Norman Cantor)

3. Culler: the self, given or made, in individual or social terms

four strands of modern thought on the self (Culler 104: identity, identification and the
subject)
Identity markers as more or less stable coordinates for the location of the self

4. Butler: discourse and power, the power of words, self and identity
subject as subjected, subjectivity (as site of intersecting, conflicting discourses), the
politics of difference;

5. Linking identity theory and social identity theory (R. Jenkins 2004 and K.
Woodward 2004)
Identity as a link between the personal and the social; the active engagement; sameness
and difference; tension between agency and constraints; i. between being seen and seeing
oneself; identities based on category/ group, or role (performance); the formation of
identity through the processes of self-categorization (social identity theory) or
identification (identity theory); social comparison and self-esteem: the more positively
the in-group is evaluated, the higher the self-esteem (Stets and Burke)

6. Questions of identity (Woodward, chapter 1)

definitions, imagining ourselves, everyday interaction, the unconscious, interpellation,
social structures, race and place, body projects

7. Identity and gender (Woodward, chapter 2)

gender identity and self-categorization, gender identity and gender development

8. Jenkins’s social identity approach

understanding identification (chapter 3), self-image and public image(chapter 7), groups
and categories (chapter 8)

9.What is Woman? Feminist criticism and identity (Cora Kaplan in Martin Coyle,
Peter Garside, Malcolm Kelsall, and John Peck, eds. Encyclopedia of Literature and
Criticism. London: Routledge, 1990)

10. A feminist approach

Angela Carter, “The Werewolf”

2
Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus”
Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl”

11. Identity as narrative; identity theory and role (performance) as a base of identity
Gerard Woodward, “Milk” identity theory and role

12. Identity and place; in-group and out-group and place – social identity theory
Ian Sansom, “Where Do We Live?”

13. Contradictions of identity based on role and on group/ category: impersonation

and identification; John Irsfeld, “Radio Elvis”

14. A psychoanalytic approach: Sylvia Plath, Ðaddy”

Bibliography
Primary texts
Adebayo, Diran, Blake Morrison and Jane Rogers. New Writing 12. London: Picador,
2003.
Irsfeld, John. Radio Elvis and Other Stories. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2002.

Secondary texts
Butler, Christopher. Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Cantor, Norman F. Twentieth-Century Culture: Modernism to Deconstruction. New York:
Peter Lang, 1988.
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford & New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997.
Jenkins, Richard. Social Identity. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Kroger, Jane, ed. Discussions on Ego Identity. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991.
Stets, Jan E. and Peter J. Burke. “Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory.” Social
Psychology Quarterly. Vol. 63, No. 3 (Sep., 2000), pp. 224 – 237.
Stryker, Sheldon and Peter J. Burke. “The Past, Present, and Future of an Identity
Theory.” Social Psychology Quarterly. Vol. 63, No. 4 (Dec. 2000), pp. 284-297.
Vlad, Eduard. Authorship and Identity in Contemporary Fiction. Constanta: Ovidius
University Press, 2005.
Kath Woodward, ed. Questioning Identity: Gender, Class, Ethnicity. London:
Routledge, 2004.