Dorothee Hou has been an assistant professor of Chinese and Asian Studies in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at Moravian University since 2023. She earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and media studies from Beijing Jiatong University, a master’s in Asian studies from Florida State University, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from UC Davis. She focuses on cultural production and social migration in the contexts of globalization and deindustrialization.
What inspired you to go into your field of study?
I work with literature and film, specifically, comparative literature, modern and contemporary Chinese literature and film.
My love for literature started with my mom, who was my first teacher and reader when I started writing. She’s a retired English professor, and I have very fond memories of her just reading stories to me both in Chinese and in English. She really inspired me to read more stories.
I spent a year at a small college as an exchange student in Massachusetts. Being an exchange student, studying, and living in the U.S., I’ve learned so much about an environment that’s completely different from mine, and it’s not just learning about American higher education and lifestyle.
Later on, I changed majors. Initially, I was majoring in communications, but I switched to comparative literature because the field is so interdisciplinary, and there were a lot of cross-cultural elements to it.
What research are you currently working on?
Currently, I have two projects. I’m completing a book manuscript, tentatively titled Red Rust: China’s Postsocialist Rust Belt in Literature, Film, and Media Culture. It examines how deindustrialization in China’s northeast is represented across literature, cinema, and new media.
China’s industrialization refers to the massive, large-scale closing or restructuring of state-owned factories since the 1990s. China, at the time, as a socialist country, had socialized healthcare, state-owned factories, and sometimes the entire cities and towns would work at a big factory owned by the state. When China started to marketize and restructure, there was a lot of closure of state-owned factories, which led to unemployment and out-migration because there was just nothing left in the town, which led to major social changes and upheavals.
Basically, my book looks at how writers, filmmakers, and even online creators in Northeastern China tell stories about what happened during that period, about factory closures, economic change, and just everyday life after socialism.
My second project is a book chapter about Mongolian and Inner Mongolian cinema. It focuses on films and TV shows representing so-called frontier regions. Mongolia is at the northern edge of China. I study the representation of frontier areas, ethnic minority, cultures, and lifestyles on China’s geographic and cultural margins. This project, in particular, asks how visual storytelling helps audiences imagine places that are often seen as rural, as distant, or outside the national mainstream. I want to draw attention to Inner Mongolia and the Mongolian ethnic group, and their representation in mainstream media and film.
What do you think is the most recent important development in your field of study?
One of the most important recent developments of Chinese studies or Chinese literary and film studies, I think, is a broader effort to move away from the center. In recent years, scholars have increasingly turned to areas that were once seen as marginal, such as science fiction, which is largely considered a popular genre, or environmental writing and cinema.
The rise of Chinese sci-fi has pushed the field to think beyond the normal themes that we consider. In literary studies, we have to think about technology, the future, global imaginaries, rather than cultural traditions or national traditions, which is really boundary pushing. And then eco-criticism draws attention to the environmental crisis, like pollution and human-nature relations, which are very relevant right now.
The studies of the sinophone (“sino” meaning China, “phone” meaning language) expand the fields beyond the nation-state, and it highlights Chinese-speaking cultural production all over the world, like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, the U.S., and the global diaspora. Together, I think these approaches have widened the boundaries of scholarly inquiry, and they have led us to study new genres, regions, and voices that are exciting.
These new trends of Chinese literary and film studies are all about connectivity and relationality. It’s not just about this is one thing I’m going to study, and this is the orthodoxy. It’s about anything in the world that cannot be itself without some kind of interaction or influence from another entity.
What job would you have if you couldn’t be a professor, regardless of salary and job outcome? Why?
I probably would want to train to become a psychologist because the human mind has always fascinated me. Alternatively, I really like to paint. I have been painting for as long as I can remember. If I get to train, be a sculptor, any kind of artist, I’d love that as well. It’s kind of hard to find time during the semester, but I did that over the winter, and hopefully, in the next year, I can finish something. It’s just ever since I was a kid, I just always liked to paint, and I was a very active, if not a distracted, kid growing up. Painting is one of the few things that actually gets me to focus and just be quiet. So maybe that’s why my parents supported my painting.
What do you know now that you wished you knew when you were in college?
I wish that I knew about the importance of relationships. At first, I thought of offering study methods because I want to be helpful and provide real strategies and tips. But relationships are important– friendships with peers, friendships with professors, or just whatever relationships that your college journey leads you to, because the most important indicator of long-term happiness is the quality of one’s relationships.
An 80-year Harvard study confirms that strong social connections are the top predictor of one’s well-being throughout one’s life. We underestimate how important relationships are to our well-being, especially in the long run. I know a lot of our students are busy and maybe stressed, have a lot of responsibilities outside of studying, and they feel like they can only study and make sure they get ahead, which I respect. Hard work is important, but it’s important to cultivate friendships, and friendship is not, like any good thing in life, exactly free. You have to commit to a friendship; you have to do things for each other. I am in touch with a lot of my friends that I made back in college in China and during my exchange year. Those relationships shaped me, and I think they’ll shape everybody who had the experience of going to college.
What is your biggest student pet peeve?
One of the things that frustrates me is when students underestimate themselves, assuming that if something feels difficult, it’s just too advanced for them. Struggle is a sign of intellectual growth and intellectual work. I think the other one is really just small, but I teach literature in film, and it requires a lot of interpretation of difficult materials. So when students rely on really vague reactions like “I didn’t get it” or “it was boring” without pointing to a very specific moment or example, it hinders their learning. I understand confusion. Confusion is totally fine, but stopping there is not.
What was the last streaming show that you binge-watched, or the last good book that you read?
I’m currently reading Dr. Rachel Barr’s How to Make Your Brain Your Best Friend: A Neuroscientist’s Guide to a Healthier, Happier Life. It’s a self-help book that offers a refreshing approach to mental health, moving away from quick fixes, like hacks. This book invites readers to understand how the brain actually works and how to work with it instead of against it. A neuroscientist, Barr draws on science and everyday examples, showing how habits, emotions, and stress responses make sense once we see them as part of our brain’s natural design. So we’re not fighting our brain, we’re working with it. It’s just a very compassionate, practical guide to understanding our brains, so we can become more self-compassionate and understanding and have a healthier relationship with our mind. Also, I think Barr is neurodivergent, so she addresses that as well.
What is something interesting about you that most people don’t know?
I’m an open book, but one thing that I haven’t talked about much is that I quite like combat sports. I used to box for two or three years and boxed two or three times a week. It was really fun. I haven’t done it much since I moved to PA. I’ve been trying out classes; I’m still looking for my gym.
I don’t want to misinform people, but I think some kind of minor fracture in your bone is actually good for bone growth, and this is something that you can’t achieve by just lifting weights or taking walks. So it has this unique value, and it’s really exciting, other than the part where you get hit, the first thing you learn is how to get hit and not get messed up.
It’s not as dangerous as people think it is, although there is an element of that. It teaches you life lessons. I remember one of my first lessons from my coach. He was teaching me how to slip so that I don’t get hit in the face and how to dodge. I think your natural reaction is to take a step back, and he said that’s when you back up, you lose balance, and they can just push you over, and then it’s done. You’re on the ground, you’re done. So he said that when a punch is thrown at you, instead of dodging and taking a step back, you actually want to lean forward and slip it. That’s so counterintuitive, you lean into someone who’s trying to attack you. So I think there are some life lessons there, like leaning into the challenges, the only way out is through. There are always these little pieces of wisdom that come up when I box or do any kind of sports.
What is your guilty pleasure after finals or just a long day of lecturing?
Getting a good meal that I like, getting Hocaa Bubble Tea on Bethlehem’s South Side, and just watching a film that I like. My husband and I have movie nights. We absolutely nerd out. We look up reviews and see if they’re aligned with our view. We have a little calendar where we document films we watch, and then we’ll give it a rating and a one-sentence comment. Sometimes it’s really silly. It’s a good time, and I mentioned the importance of relationships. It was also a bonding moment, and it’s relaxing.
What led you to pursue your master’s at Florida State and then your Ph.D. at UC Davis?
I had several really good mentors at Florida State, where I majored in Asian civilizations, which is a very interdisciplinary master’s program. I’ve taken classes in East Asian Literature, film, artistry, global relations, anthropology, economics, and political science. I also took classes in the history department, so I had some mentors from that department. I got a lot of guidance from them, and they helped me trim down my interests and also helped me find the program at UC Davis in comparative literature.
When it comes to Ph.D. programs, it’s more important that your research interest is aligned with the department, and more importantly, your advisor’s research interest, because you want someone to be able to mentor you. The move from Florida to California was mostly motivated by the academic program that I was accepted into. I did have several options on the East Coast as well. It’s kind of hard to say no to California, on top of the perfect alignment of my work and my advisor’s. I had a really good time there, but I’m glad that I’m back on the East Coast, because it has so much to offer, especially in the tri-state area. There is so much culture and events, but it was a pretty big move from California to PA.
