UH Hosts Pioneer in Postcolonial Literature Gayatri Spivak, Jan. 29

World-Renowned Theorist and Kyoto Laureate in Thoughts and Ethics

Gayatri Spivak

The University of Houston (UH) welcomes to campus Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a world renowned literary theorist and postcolonial studies expert, to deliver a lecture at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 29 at the University Theater, Student Center, room 103. The event is free and open to the public.

“Literary scholarship would not be the same without Dr. Spivak’s writings,” said UH associate professor Hosam Aboul-Ela in the Department of English at UH. “Her political use of a wide array of critical theories to question colonialism and the way we have been conditioned to think about literature has been the foundation to multiple disciplines within literary and cultural studies, including deconstructive criticism, postcolonial theory, transnational feminism and translation studies.”

In her UH talk, “Lessons from My Travels,” Spivak will discuss her personal experiences teaching at both ends of the academic spectrum from Columbia University to elementary schools on the border of West Bengal and Jharkhand in India.

As a University Professor, Spivak holds the highest faculty rank at Columbia University, where she is a founding member of the Ivy League school’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. She was born in India and earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Calcutta and doctorate in comparative literature from Cornell University.

Spivak has authored, edited and translated approximately 20 books and has been awarded eight honorary doctorates.  In June 2012, the Inamori Foundation named Spivak a Kyoto laureate when it awarded her the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy in the field of thought and ethics. Kyoto Prizes are among the world’s richest and most prestigious awards and they recognize individuals in fields excluded from consideration for Nobel Prizes.

WHAT: Gayatri Spivak Lecture “Lessons from My Travels” 
5:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 29
Free and open to the public.
For more information, contact UH Prof. Hosam Aboul-Ela at haboul-ela@uh.edu
WHERE:

University Theater, Student Center, room 103
 For directions, click http://www.uh.edu/maps/buildings/?short_name=UC
Public parking is available in the UH Welcome Center Garage.
Entrance 1 off Calhoun Road

WHO:    The lecture is hosted by the Department of English, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Martha Gano Houston Endowment Fund, The Center for Public History, El Paso Corporation Lecture Series and the Rice University Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality.

 

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