Background
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born on February 24, 1942 in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, to parents Pares Chandra and Sivani Chakravorty. Spivak's great grandfather Pratap Chandra Majumdar had been Sri Ramakrishna's doctor.
After completing her secondary education at St. John's Diocesan Girls' Higher Secondary School, Spivak received an undergraduate degree in English at the Presidency College, Kolkata under the University of Calcutta in 1959, graduating with first class honours and received gold medals for English and Bengali literature.
2007
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 2007.
Spivak completed her secondary education at St. John's Diocesan Girls' Higher Secondary School.
After completing her secondary education at St. John's Diocesan Girls' Higher Secondary School, Spivak received an undergraduate degree in English at the Presidency College, Kolkata under the University of Calcutta in 1959, graduating with first class honours and received gold medals for English and Bengali literature.
After this, in 1961, she attended Cornell University where she completed her Master of Arts in English.
In 1963-1964, Spivak attended Girton College, Cambridge, as a research student under the supervision of Professor T.R. Henn, writing on the representation of the stages of development of the lyric subject in the poetry of William Butler Yeats.
গায়ত্রী চক্রবর্তী স্পিভাক
educator feminist critic literary theorist philosopher author
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was born on February 24, 1942 in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, to parents Pares Chandra and Sivani Chakravorty. Spivak's great grandfather Pratap Chandra Majumdar had been Sri Ramakrishna's doctor.
After completing her secondary education at St. John's Diocesan Girls' Higher Secondary School, Spivak received an undergraduate degree in English at the Presidency College, Kolkata under the University of Calcutta in 1959, graduating with first class honours and received gold medals for English and Bengali literature. After this, in 1961, she attended Cornell University where she completed her Master of Arts in English.
In 1963-1964, Spivak attended Girton College, Cambridge, as a research student under the supervision of Professor T.R. Henn, writing on the representation of the stages of development of the lyric subject in the poetry of William Butler Yeats. She presented a course in the summer of 1963 on "Yeats and the Theme of Death" at the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland.
In 1967 she pursued her Ph.D. in comparative literature at Cornell University.
Besides, Spivak has received 11 honorary doctorates: University of Toronto, University of London, Oberlin College, Universitat Rovira Virgili, Rabindra Bharati University, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, University of St Andrews, Université de Vincennes à Saint-Denis, Presidency University, Yale University, University of Ghana-Legon.
In the Fall of 1965, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak became an assistant professor in the department of English, University of Iowa. She received tenure in 1970. During that time, she wrote her first book, written for young adults, "Myself I Must Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats".
In 1967, on her regular attempts at self-improvement, Spivak purchased a book, by an author unknown to her, entitled "De la grammatologie". She decided to translate the book by an unknown author, and wrote a long translator's preface. This publication was immediately a success, and the Translator's Preface became popular across the world as an introduction to the philosophy of deconstruction launched by the author, Jacques Derrida; whom Spivak met in 1971.
In 1974, at the University of Iowa, Spivak founded the MFA in Translation in the department of Comparative Literature. The following year, she became the Director of the Program in Comparative Literature and was promoted to full professorship. In 1978, she was National Humanities Professor at the University of Chicago. She received many subsequent residential visiting professorships and fellowships.
In 1978, she moved to the University of Texas at Austin as professor of English and Comparative Literature. In 1982, she was appointed as the Longstreet Professor in English and Comparative Literature at Emory University. In 1986, she went to the University of Pittsburgh as the first Mellon Professor of English. Here she established the Cultural Studies program. In 1991, she joined Columbia University as Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, where, in March 2007, Spivak was made the University Professor, the institution's highest faculty rank, making her the only woman of colour to be bestowed the University's highest honor in its 264-year history.
in addition, Spivak has served on the advisory board of numerous academic journals, including differences, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, and Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies.
Apart from Derrida, Spivak has also translated the fiction of the Bengali author, Mahasweta Devi; the poetry of the 18-century Bengali poet Ram Prashad Sen; and most recently "A Season in the Congo" by Aimé Césaire, poet, essayist and statesman from Martinique.
Her critical writings include "In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics" (1987), "The Post-Colonial Critic" (1990), "Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality" (1992), "Outside in the Teaching Machine" (1993), "A Critique of Postcolonial Reason" (1999), "Death of a Discipline" (2003), "Other Asias" (2005), and "An Aesthetic Education in the Age of Globalization" (2012).
In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (1987)
The Spivak Reader (1995)
Other Asias (2005)
Myself, I Must Remake: The Life and Poetry of W.B. Yeats (1974)
Of Grammatology (translation, with a critical introduction, of Derrida's text) (1976)
Selected Subaltern Studies (edited with Ranajit Guha) (1988)
he Post-Colonial Critic - Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (1990)
Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993)
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present (1999)
Death of a Discipline (2003)
An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012)