“I’m interested in literature as product of a community and the way in which they decide what to include, what not to include, what is good, what is bad, how they choose to engage with censorship or not engage with censorship,” said Michel Hockx, professor of Chinese literature and culture in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures in the College of Arts and Letters.
Hockx has published works both in English and in Chinese on early 20th-century Chinese print culture as well as contemporary Internet culture in China. Recently, he has been working in the area of moral censorship in China, which he said is a much more frequent type of censorship than the much-publicized political censorship in China.
“Even though moral censorship exists in every country in the world, it doesn’t necessarily work the same way in every country in the world,” Hockx said. “Who makes those decisions? Who decides what is art and what is not art?”
As director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs, Hockx hopes to expand the role Asia plays in the study of global affairs at Notre Dame, especially considering the role Asia plays in the world today.
“If we are serious about training the world’s future leaders,” said Hockx, “then the world’s future leaders need to know a lot of Asia.”
You can also watch this video on YouTube.
Originally published by at al.nd.edu on September 07, 2017.