Dr. David Chu Distinguished Visitor Series
Co-Presented by the Centre for the Study of Korea
Haejoang Cho, Professor Emeritus, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Yonsei University
This public lecture and dialogue with the wider Toronto community will focus on the precarious youth at the Haja Center (the Seoul Youth Factory for Alternative Culture) and their survival politics based on Professor Haejoang Cho’s pedagogical and socio-political experiments. It will be an opportunity to engage in conversations with one of Korea’s leading public intellectuals and activists. In the rapidly globalizing East Asian context, the project has evolved in response to several national and global crises: the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 2008- 2009 global financial crises, and the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Interested in a pedagogy that fundamentally connects life and learning, Professor Cho has endeavored to create platforms that enable new types of learning in various forms including a youth center, an alternative school, an after-school community, and a transition town. This talk will explain the launching of these platforms and the discussion of anticipated new projects. As Ulrich Beck described in his term, “emancipatory catastrophism,” the power of transformation comes from a keen awareness of recent economic, social, and natural crises. This power is fundamental and globally shared, rather than isolated and unique. Professor Cho will discuss how the youth can bring their experiences and observation of crises into an “epochal transformation” by actively making connections and creatively turning the connections into new possibilities.
Haejoang Cho is a cultural anthropologist by training and feminist in faith. She is Professor Emeritus of Yonsei University in Seoul. Her early research focused on gender studies in Korean modern history; her current interests and research are in the area of youth culture and modernity in the global/local and post-colonial context of modern day Korea. Cho is the founding director of Haja Center (The Seoul Youth Factory for Alternative Culture), an alternative educational and cultural studio for teenagers established in 1999. The Haja project has promoted ‘action research’ to address youth issues from the perspectives of feminism, cultural studies, and ecological studies in the rapidly globalizing East Asian context.
Co-Sponsored by: Asian Institute, OISE Adult Education and Community Development, Munk School of Global Affairs, Women & Gender Studies Institute, Department of Anthropology, Hope 21 (Korean Progressive Network in Canada)
Register online at: http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?eventid=16492
Women and Gender Studies Institute