Humanities Academy

The Empowerment Reading Seminar

2026.01.28~2026.12.31 / #1106, New Millennium Hall

  • The 8th Empowerment Reading Seminar

    Date & Time: Wednesday, January 28, 1:30–4:00 PM

    Text: Pinnix, A., Volmar, A., Esposito, F., & Binder, N. (2023). Rethinking Infrastructure Across the Humanities. transcript publishing.

    Section I: Introduction
    ■ 1.1 Introduction — Taehee Kim (Hyperobject Team)

    ■ 1.2 From Structure to Infrastructure — Ilman Choe (Hyperobject Team)

    ■ 1.3 From Systems to “Infrastructuring” — Hongsuk Yoon (Ethos Team)

  • The 9th Empowerment Reading Seminar

    Date & Time: Wednesday, March 25, 2:00–4:00 PM

    Text: Pinnix, A., Volmar, A., Esposito, F., & Binder, N. (2023). Rethinking Infrastructure Across the Humanities. transcript publishing.

    Section II: Infrastructures and Communication
    ■ 2.1 Language as Infrastructure — Haun Park (Hyperobject Team)

    ■ 2.2 Conceptual Infrastructure and Conceptual Engineering — Johaeng Noh (Text Team)

    ■ 2.3 Practices of Classification: The Hashtag as Infrastructure for Interaction — Hongsuk Yoon (Ethos Team)

    ■ 2.4 On the Symbolic Infrastructure of Face-to-Face Communication in Early Modern Society: Simple Success Media — Hyojin Jeon (Ethos Team)

  • The 10th Empowerment Reading Seminar

    Date & Time: Wednesday, April 29, 10:00–12:40 AM

    Text: Pinnix, A., Volmar, A., Esposito, F., & Binder, N. (2023). Rethinking Infrastructure Across the Humanities. transcript publishing.

    Section III: Infrastructures and Sociality

    ■ 3.1 Command and Consilium: On Infrastructures of Decision-Making in Roman Culture — Hyojin Jeon (Ethos Team)

    ■ 3.2 Couple Apps as Relationship Infrastructures — Injin Woo (Ethos Team)

    ■ 3.3 Infrastructures of Democracy: Lewinian Group Dynamics and the Management of Social Change (1930s–1940s) — Seojin Oh (Text Team)

    ■ 3.4 Conflicting Infrastructures: Ideological vs Social Infrastructures in Transmediterranean Communications of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries — Taehee Kim (Hyperobject Team)

The Empowerment Reading Seminar

JUN 26, 2025 - DEC 31, 2025 / #1106, New Millennium Hall, Konkuk University

Through the study of major works in the humanities and social sciences on infrastructure, this course aims to establish the theoretical foundation for research in infrastructural humanities.

  • The 7th Empwerment Reading Seminar

    Date and Time : 31 DEC (Mon) 14:00~16:00

    <Text Team Presentation>

    Davies, Dominic, Introduction Infrastructure, Resistance, Literature, Imperial infrastructure and Spatial Resistance in Colonial Literature, 1880-1930, Oxford; New York: Peter Lang, 2017, 1-55.

  • The 6th Empwerment Reading Seminar

    Date and Time : 24 NOV (Mon) 10:00~12:00

    <Ethos Team Presentation> 

    Appel, Hannah, Anand, Nikhil, and Akhil Gupta, “Introduction: Temporality, Politics”, The Promise of Infrastructure. Anand, Nikhil, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel, eds. Duke University Press, 2018, 1-38

  • The 5th Empwerment Reading Seminar

    Date and Time: OCT 27 (Mon) 10:00~12:00

    Topics:
    - Presentation and discussion of papers by each subproject team
    - Recognizing infrastructure as an ethical field that can expand the scope of moral consideration within the dynamics of relational arrangements
    - Understanding that the extension of urban agriculture to the non-human realm demands considerations of equity, justice, and sustainability, and that traditional ethical theories should be supplemented with outcome-based evaluative frameworks to visualize distributed and deferred harm and to design accountability

    <Hyperobject Team Presentation>
    Kanoi, Lav, Koh, Vanessa, Lim, Al, Yamada, Shoko, and Michael R Dove, “‘What Is Infrastructure? What Does It Do?’: Anthropological Perspectives on the Workings of Infrastructure(s)”. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability 2(1), 2022.

    <Ethos Team Presentation>
    Epting, Shane. "The moral dimensions of infrastructure." Science and engineering ethics 22.2 (2016), 435-449  

  • The 4th Empwerment Reading Seminar

    Date and Time: SEP 29 (Mon), 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

    Topics

    1. Presentation and discussion of papers by each sub-project team

    2. Exploring infrastructure as a sociotechnical ecosystem that materializes power and inequality through mechanisms of access and exclusion; foregrounding the background by reexamining infrastructural inversion and the materiality of the digital; investigating participatory interventions of social scientists in processes of design, standardization, and governance.

    3. Understanding infrastructural violence as the point where abstract orders—such as the state, law, and citizenship—are materialized through devices that organize suffering and inequality via active design and passive exclusion/disconnection; recognizing an analytical framework that extends responsibility from individuals to collective and structural dimensions, suggesting paths for practical intervention.

    <Hyperobject Team>
    Slota, Stephen C. and Geoffrey C. Bowker, “How Infrastructures Matter,” The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by U. Felt et al., 4th ed., Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017, pp. 529–554.

    <Ethos Team>
    Rodgers, Dennis, and Bruce O’Neill. “Infrastructural Violence: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Ethnography 13.4 (2012): 401–412.

  • The 3rd Empwerment Reading Seminar

    Date and Time: SEP 1 (Mon), 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

    Topics

    1. Presentation and discussion of papers by each sub-project team
    2. Review of key concepts for understanding infrastructure as an actor-relational structure, and exploration of possible methods, indicators, and case outlines for applying these concepts to research in the humanities of mobility infrastructure.
    3. Recognition of the agenda’s expansion—from mobility to infrastructure—through discussions of the definitions and methodologies of infrastructure.

    <Presentation – Hyperobject Team>
    Larkin, Brian. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (2013): 327–343.

    <Presentation – Text Team>
    Star, Susan Leigh. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43(3), 1999, 377–391.

  • The 2nd Empwerment Reading Seminar

    Date and Time: AUG 4 (Mon), 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

    Topics

    1. Presentation and discussion of papers by each sub-project team
    2. Discussion on the validity of Bruno Latour’s concept of the Parliament of Things
    3. Discussion on the position and role of the concept of infrastructure within the Humanities of Infrastructure

    <Presentation – Hyperobject Team>
    Adey, Peter, Jinhyoung Lee, Giada Peterle, and Tania Rossetto. “Mobility, Infrastructure, and the Humanities.” Mobility Humanities 3(1), 2024, 1–17.

    <Presentation – Text Team>
    Bridges, Mary. “The Infrastructural Turn in Historical Scholarship.” Modern American History 6(1), 2023, 103–120.

  • The 1st Empwerment Reading Seminar

    Date and Time: JUN 30 (Mon), 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

    Topics

    1. Presentation and discussion of papers by each sub-project team
    2. Discussion on infrastructure as both an object and a methodological lens in the Humanities of Infrastructure
    3. Discussion on the scope and boundaries of infrastructure

    <Presentation - Text Team>
    이정, 「기반 시설, 혹은 사회생태 기간망을 통한 생태적 역사학」, 『개념과 소통』 33, 2024, 317-354

    <Presentation - Ethos Team>
    구동현, 「인프라적 공간을 배회하는 신자유주의라는 유령: 자유화와 시장화를 추동하는 신자유주의의 모빌리티에 대한 비판적 검토」, 『사회와이론』 50, 2025, 179-211

    <Presentation - Hyperobject Team>
    김태희, 「인류세의 기후-인프라: 인프라 인문학의 관점에서」, 『2025 인프라 인문학 국내학술대회 자료집』, 2025, 33-51