April 20th was 'Special Needs Day'. To mark that day, the Smgonggam Center at Sookmyung Research Institute of Humanities held special lectures during week three and four of <Reading Sympathy Month>, from April 15th to 22nd. The purpose of the special lecture series from the Smgonggam Center was to set the stage for discussing the issue of 'hate', a hot topic nowadays, and how to overcome it. The course was streamed on YouTube. Activities maps were employed and could be accessed from the Smgonggam Center blog, which enhanced lecture content understanding and made students think deeply about the topic. On April 15, Jang Hawon, a humanities researcher at Kyung Hee University, talked about autism. From the first autism diagnosis to the present, she discussed growing knowledge, theories, and various techniques and tools made in that medical area. Jang also talked about how society could better understand autism and better present help those on the autistic spectrum by reflecting on the history of autism and research. Author Ha Mina's lecture on April 22nd covered depression among women. She defined and classified depression by explaining the history of psychiatry and the process by which knowledge was formed to measure depression. She also examined whether individuals were overlooking their depression by simply claiming to feel gloomy. By supplementing her talk with academic resources and showing comments from interviewees who are suffering from female depression, she answered questions such as 'What do people who do not fit into the psychiatric classification of depression think of themselves?' and 'How are they living with depressed images of their bodies?'. Next in the lecture series will be three photographers who will present on their communications with special needs persons. This lecture was uploaded from the fifth week of April.
