Jaeyeon Lee is an assistant professor of international studies in the global politics and societies (GPS) department. She earned her Ph.D. in comfort women activism led by South Korean postcolonial subjects in the context of East Asian (post) Cold War geopolitics at the University of Kentucky, her M.A. in the Uncanny Poetics of Baek Seok at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea, and her B.A. in Korean literature and language, and philosophy. Her current research explores the relationship between post-colonial cities and women’s bodies and affects.
Courses Taught
- Geopolitics
- Korean Media, Literature, and Society
- Postcolonial and Poststructural Theories
- Comparative Urbanism
- Psychic Lives of Politics
- Gender, Love, and Class in East Asian Popular Culture
- Feminist Geographies
- World Geography
- Globalization and Local Responses
- Affect, Space, and Power
Research Interests
- Korean comfort women; emotion and affect; (post-) Cold War; political and cultural geographies; geopolitics; (post)colonialism; nationalism and gender; trauma; psychoanalysis; social movements; political philosophy; critical pedagogies; urban studies; ethnography; museum activism; virtual reality technology; postcolonial tourism
Education
- Ph.D., geography, University of Kentucky
- M.A., Korean poetry, Sogang University in South Korea
- B.A., philosophy and Korean literature and language, Sogang University in South Korea
Publications & Articles
- Peer reviewed
- Lee, J. (2025). Digital hauntology: the Heeum Museum’s VR exhibition and the ghostly testimonies of Japanese military ‘comfort women.’ Social & Cultural Geography, 1–23.
- Lee, Jaeyeon, and Chang, Ruwen. 2022. “Torn Apart! Transnational Feminist Researchers’ Geopolitical Positionality in (pre-) COVID-19 times”. Gender, Place, and Culture
- Lee, Jaeyeon. 2022. “Melancholia is (geo)political! Postcolonial geography in the Wednesday Demonstration in Seoul.” Cultural Geographies, 29 (1): 45-61.
- Lee, Jaeyeon. 2021. “The ethno-nationalist solidarity and (dis)comfort in the Wednesday Demonstration in South Korea.” Gender, Place, and Culture.
- Lee, Jaeyeon. 2024. “Left-Wing Populist Activism and Identification: A Psycho-Political Analysis of the ‘Comfort Girl’ Statue Movements in South Korea.” Political Geography.