Leading feminist thinker Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (right) is coming to York March 1 to give a lecture entitled, “What is Gender? Where is Europe? Walking with Etienne Balibar,” as part of the Feminist Speakers Series.
A well known postcolonial theorist, the India-born intellectual is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. An activist as well as educator, she is involved in international women’s movements and issues surrounding ecological agriculture. She has been deeply involved in rural education in Asia for nearly two decades. Among her recent books are Other Asias and Death of a Discipline.
Spivak received her BA from the University of Calcutta and her PhD in comparative literature from Cornell University. She holds honorary degrees from the universities of Toronto and London.
Spivak has published numerous books including: Of Grammatology (translation with critical introduction of Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1976); Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality (1993); Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993); A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (1999). She has translated the books of Indian writer Mahasweta Devi and the 18th-century Bengali mystical lyric Song for Kali: A Cycle. Her recent articles reflect her activism and concern for human rights and include “Righting Wrongs” (2003) and “Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching” (2004); “Translating into English” (2005).
The lecture takes place in Stedman Lecture Hall D at 7pm. Reception and refreshments will follow in the Hospitality York dining room, S167 Ross.
The event is organized by the Graduate Political Science Student Association women’s caucus and funded by York Centre for International and Security Studies Distinguished Critical Thinkers in World Politics Series, the Graduate Program in Political Science, the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the Department of Political Science and the Office of the Vice-President Academic.
For further information, call 416-736-5265.