Title：Queer Politics of the Wounded: Reparation Work and Queer Youth Activism in South Korea
Speaker：Minwoo Jung (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Loyola University Chicago)
Chair：Chen Liang（Assistant Professor of Sociology, NTU）
Time：September 25, 2025 (Thu.) 12:30–14:00
Venue：Department of Sociology and Social Work R319
Sing Up Here
About the Speech
How do communities shaped by structural harms address their social wounds and become political subjects? How is a queer politics of the wounded possible beyond the logics of agony and resentment? This article introduces the concept of reparation work to answer these questions in the context of LGBTQ+ student activism in contemporary South Korea. Drawing from feminist, queer, and decolonial scholarship, it explores how institutionalized homophobia not only wounds queer youth but also enables them to become political subjects. The article examines how queer students transform their wounds into sites of reparation, building reparative communities and envisioning reparative futures through everyday acts like band-aid campaigns and more organized efforts to challenge heteronormative campus politics. Through reparation work, queer youth activists confront their pasts, challenge structures of wounding, and envision livable futures. This article presents reparation work as a lens for broader justice struggles and queer youth politics within and beyond Asia.
About the Speaker
Minwoo Jung’s research focuses on culture, power, and agency, exploring political action and everyday life from global and transnational perspectives. His work has been published in leading journals such as British Journal of Sociology, Current Sociology, Sociological Theory, and The Sociological Review. He has also received awards from the American Sociological Association, the International Sociological Association, the American Political Science Association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and British Journal of Sociology.
