March 1, 1999		Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association Hosts Lecture by Leading Scholar Media Contact: Marci Janas
	Monday, March 15 12:00 noon King Building Room 106 (corner of N. Professor and W. College streets) Free public event For more information please call the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association (440) 775-8605		OBERLIN, OH--With work that has been translated into all the major European and Asian languages, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is considered a leading scholar in the deconstructive analysis of verbal, visual and social texts. A global feminist marxist, she is also widely acknowledged as the conscience of the metropolitan politics of identity. Spivak, who is the Avalon Foundation Professor in Humanities at Columbia University, will deliver the annual Shansi Distinguished Lecture at Oberlin College on March 15. Her talk is titled "Cultural Studies." Professor Spivak has held numerous fellowships, including those with the National Humanities Institute, the Humanities Research Center at the Australian National University, the Center for the Study of Social Sciences (Calcutta), the Davis Center for Historical Studies (Princeton), and the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio.) Her publications include In Other Worlds; The Post-Colonial Critic; Outside the Teaching Machine; Of Grammatology (a translation, with critical introduction, of Jacques Derrida's De la grammatologie) and two translations, with critical material, on the fiction of Mahasweta Devi-- Imaginary Maps and Breast Stories. She is currently translating, for the definitive edition, the selected works of Devi. "The Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association is delighted that Professor Spivak has agreed to be this year's speaker," says Carl Jacobson, executive director. The lecture series brings eminent Asian scholars to Oberlin to address topics of general concern complementary to the Asian Studies curriculum. The Shansi Association is one of the oldest international educational exchange programs in the United States.