The K-Future Team of the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies cordially invites you to a public colloquium with Professor Suhwan Kim.

• Title: How I Learned to Stop Doing ‘Theory’ and to Love the Soviet

• Speaker: Prof. Suhwan Kim (Department of Russian, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

• Date & Time: Friday, March 28, 2025, 4:00–6:00 PM

• Venue: Room 308, Shinyang Humanities Information Hall (Bldg. 4, College of Humanities), Seoul National University

Lecture Overview:

After earning my PhD in 2002 with a dissertation on 20th-century Russian semiotician Yuri Lotman, I spent roughly a decade identifying as a “theory scholar.” In this talk, I wish to share—in a tone that is admittedly quite personal, perhaps even affective—how I came to encounter the “Soviet” as a new object of inquiry, and how that encounter reshaped my perspectives and approaches.

I will reflect on the trajectory and outcomes of my earlier theoretical research, while also offering a glimpse into the shifts in my current interests and directions. Through this brief “personal intellectual history,” I hope to open a space for thinking about how the world around us has changed during the first quarter of the 21st century.

This lecture is less a rigorous argument than an invitation: a gesture toward rethinking theory, its limits, and its emotional resonances—through one scholar’s evolving relationship with the Soviet past.

Contact:
Yong-rae Jung, Research Assistant
📧 jyongr422@snu.ac.kr