This lecture is free and open to the public. Please note that this event takes place off-campus at the National Taiwan University. Times listed are local venue times.
Hosted by the Notre Dame Club of Taiwan and the Department of Chinese Literature at the National Taiwan University.
About the Lecture
Ever since the start of the reform era in the late 1970s, there has been an understanding between the Chinese leadership and Chinese writers that literature need no longer function as propaganda, the way it was expected to under Mao. The current leader Xi Jinping, in his public statements about literature, has maintained this consensus and often confirmed the independent aesthetic value of writing. At the same time, though, PRC cultural regulatory institutions are attempting to push literary writing and writers in a specific direction, often using moral rather than political arguments. Much ideological pressure is also being exerted on publishers and authors of online genre fiction, which has developed into a major cultural industry.
About the Speaker
Michel Hockx is director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs and professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame. Hockx previously served as professor of Chinese and director of the China Institute at SOAS, University of London, where he oversaw a community of 50 China scholars in a dozen disciplinary departments. Hockx studied Chinese language and literature at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he earned his PhD at Liaoning and Peking universities in China. In addition to his scholarly work, he has also been active as a translator of modern Chinese literature into his native Dutch.
