EUGENE–Thought-provoking essayist and Asian scholar Eugene Eoyang will discuss what you find when you find yourself in the Oregon Humanities Center’s 1999-2000 Robert and Beverly Lewis Lecture on Thursday, Feb. 24, at the University of Oregon.

Eoyang will address differing cultural perspectives on the concepts of self and individuality in "When I Find Myself, What Do I Find and Who Did the Looking?–Intercultural Challenges to the Notion of Self." His free public lecture will take place at 4 p.m. in the Alumni Lounge at Gerlinger Hall, 1468 University St.

A reception and book signing will follow.

Eoyang is the author of "Coat of Many Colors: Reflections on Diversity by a Minority of One" (Beacon Press, 1995), in which he examines questions concerning what it means to live in an increasingly culturally diverse United States. In these thought-provoking essays, as one reviewer remarks, Eoyang presents "a lively and unconventional [argument] for a new understanding of what is ‘foreign’ in America–with implications for racial categories, the status of the English language, the treatment of immigrants, and the structure of higher education."

Eoyang is a professor of comparative literature and of East Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University, as well as a professor of English at Lingnan College in Hong Kong. He received his doctoral degree in comparative literature from Indiana University.

Currently chair of the Intercultural Studies Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association, Eoyang will join the association’s Executive Council this year.

His interests include translation, especially the translation of Chinese poetry, and cross-cultural experience. His book on translation, "The Transparent Eye: Translation, Chinese Literature and Comparative Poetics," was published in 1993 by the University of Hawaii Press.

The Robert and Beverly Lewis Lecture in the Humanities features scholars whose work is interdisciplinary. Previous Lewis lecturers have included J.T. Fraser (1993), Mark Johnson (1993), Reinhold Grimm (1994), Roger Shattuck (1995), Richard Rorty (1996) and Cornel West (1998).

For more information, browse http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~humanctr or call the Oregon Humanities Center, (541) 346-3934.

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