Literature rarely stays in one place. Texts and their writers travel across borders and languages, reaching new audiences with new ideas.
But they can’t do it on their own. They need editors, publishers, translators, donors, and supportive spouses — people Michel Hockx calls “travel agents.”
As an expert in Chinese literature who’s published four monographs, seven edited volumes, a book-length translation, and dozens of journal articles, Hockx is a literary travel agent himself. Now, he’s researching how other agents have guided the trajectories of Chinese writers as their work moves throughout their country and beyond.
In support of this work, Hockx has been awarded a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), one of the world’s foremost centers for intellectual inquiry into the sciences and the humanities. He will spend the 2026-27 academic year at the IAS campus in Princeton, New Jersey, working on his next book, tentatively titled “Modern Chinese Writers and Their Travel Agents.”
“I’m delighted to be able to spend a year at IAS and interact with others who work in literature and culture, as well as those who come from different fields and different places,” said Hockx, a professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame. “To be part of the community and work on my research — it’s going to be great.”
The IAS fellowship will mark the end of Hockx’s 10 years leading the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, during which he significantly increased the number of Asia-focused faculty fellows, secured two major Korea Foundation grants, helped to integrate the institute into the Keough School of Global Affairs, and strengthened University relationships with partners in Asia.
As he begins his next chapter writing his next book, Hockx isn’t starting from scratch — he’s drawing from research and relationships he’s cultivated throughout his career.
The foundation of the project is Chinese poet Wu Xinghua, whom Hockx first wrote about in 1999. Wu began writing during World War II while living in Japanese-occupied Beijing, and when Communist forces entered the city in 1949, he stayed to pursue a career outside poetry. However, his friend Song Qi relocated to Hong Kong and later Taiwan, and brought Wu’s poems, publishing them under a different name.
“Wu’s poems influenced this whole generation of Taiwanese and Hong Kong poets, but nobody knew who he was except for a few people,” Hockx said.
Wu died in China’s Cultural Revolution, before scholars looked into his pseudonymous work decades later. It was then that his story came to light, and his works were finally published. Hockx received some manuscripts from Wu’s family during that time, becoming part of the trajectory of Wu’s writing and legacy.
In the book’s first chapter, Hockx will delve deeper into Wu’s story and the literary travel agents who ensured his writing survived. Hockx also hopes to uncover more stories from the Cold War era, when others often risked their lives to carry texts outside of China.
The rest of the book will draw from Hockx’s more than 30-year career, during which he connected with writers such as novelist Hong Ying.
He’ll also devote a chapter to translation’s role in the travel of Chinese literature, specifically focusing on the decisions translators make when they have to change a text, which are sometimes motivated by censorship or to smooth the subtle ridges of cultural differences. Hockx explored the effect of censorship in his book Literature and Censorship in Modern China, which was published in March. Working on that particular piece helped him realize how much he wanted to gather and unfold different aspects of his career.
“Writing that book opened the floodgates,” he said. “I realized that there’s so much that I know from reading over the years and talking to people and writing articles.”
While Hockx doesn’t have to hunt down too many new research leads, it’s certainly not an easy task to pull together decades of work. But it’s necessary to capture a nuanced image of the world of Chinese literature.
“People think everything in China is very unidirectional, very monotonous, very restrictive for writers,” Hockx said. “But that’s just never been my experience.”
While censorship and political pressure exist in China, Hockx said he doesn’t want them to limit how other scholars view the creativity displayed both in print and online. Learning about Chinese literature, he said, can reveal insights about mobility and globalization more broadly.
“I don’t make decisions about what is good about literature,” Hockx said. “I just look at what’s out there.”
Originally published by at al.nd.edu on April 16, 2026.