The speaker, Dr Taek-Gwang Lee is a literary critic of contemporary social and cultural phenomena and co-editor of the book, The Idea of Communism 3: The Seoul Conference with Zizek Slavoj. Dr Lee is a professor at the School of Global Communication, Kyung Hee University, and conducts research focusing on British and American cultural theories, and political philosophy. His representative works include journal articles; “Global Fascism and Colonial Biopolitics in Asia” and “Decolonizing Madness: Fanon and Lacan” and books entitled: Virginia Woolf Book Club and Red Ink.
In this special lecture, Dr Lee stated that the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 has raised new mobility-related concerns. He argued that it is problematic that countries have mainly made nation-state-based efforts to tackle the coronavirus although the impact of the pandemic is global, and that solutions should be sought internationally. He maintained, “The current pandemic situation will further deteriorate the problems of nation-states developed after the European Enlightenment. Moreover, the current world system will not solve a global crisis like this.” This colloquium lecture was a great opportunity to explore the possibility of expanding the horizons of mobility research by examining the relationship between mobility humanities and epidemiology in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to social distancing measures, researchers cannot convene en-masse in an offline conference, therefore the #14 Mobility Humanities Colloquium was filmed and disseminated through the Academy of Mobility Humanities’ (AMH) YouTube channel.