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

    HOUSTON, TX, January 28, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- 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 [email protected]

WHERE:
University Theater, Student Center (formerly known as the University Center, UC), room 103
University of Houston
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.

About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH serves more than 40,900 students in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region in the country. For more information about UH, visit the university's newsroom at http://www.uh.edu/news-events/

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