Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born February 24, 1942) is an Indian literary critic, theorist, and self-described "practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist". She is best known for the article "Can the Subaltern Speak?", considered a founding text of postcolonialism, and for her translation of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. Spivak teaches at Columbia University, where she was tenured as University Professor in March 2007. Spivak is perhaps best known for her overtly political use of contemporary cultural and critical theories to challenge the legacy of colonialism on the way readers engage with literature and culture. She often focuses on the cultural texts of those who are marginalised by dominant western culture: the new immigrant, the working class, women and the "postcolonial subject." She is also a visiting faculty member at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.