Duc Dau

I specialise in literature and culture from the nineteenth century onwards, with an emphasis on biblical reception, religion and literature, emotions, gender, and sexualities.

Author of Touching God: Hopkins and Love (2012) and Gender, Sexuality, and the Song of Songs in Victorian Literature and Culture (forthcoming 2019), and co-editor of Queer Victorian Families: Curious Relations in Literature (2015), my articles have appeared in such journals as Australian Literary Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture, Victorian Poetry, Religion and Literature, Literature and Theology, and The Hopkins Quarterly.

I am currently a Research Fellow in Media and Communication at UWA, working on an ARC-funded project exploring the reception of queer Australian film and television.

I also specialise in improving systems in higher education. I have written policy reports on research-informed teaching and am the lead author of a 70-page research report about the LGBT student experience at UWA. The resultant report is the first of its kind in Australia and includes recommendations to UWA and the Student Guild to improve LGBT student inclusion.

I have a contract with The Ohio State University Press to publish my next book, Gender, Sexuality, and the Song of Songs in Victorian Literature and Culture. Appearing in their series 'Literature, Religion, and Postsecular Studies', the book explores how the Song of Songs was used to fashion, and to contest, the norms of romantic love, sexual relations, gender roles, and marriage in Victorian and early twentieth-century literature and culture. The project was funded by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award.

I am working on a new research project on Christian publishing in the US, UK, and Australia. With a focus on female readerships, it is the first project to consider the technologies of Christian publishing from over the past 200 years.  

After being awarded my PhD, and before returning to the university sector, I worked in health communication for several years at the WA Mental Health Commission. Specialising in publications, public relations, and marketing, I established and became the first Editor of a statewide mental health magazine aimed at a general readership (the first of its kind in Australia), developed strategic proactive and reactive media approaches, and was the head speechwriter for the Mental Health Minister and the Mental Health Commissioner. I have also worked in the areas of strategic marketing, inclusion and diversity, and policy development.

I have taught widely, from film to TV, to canonical literature, gender studies, professional writing, history, media, advocacy, and health promotion. Highlights include teaching James Joyce's Ulysses over several weeks, and co-teaching -- with Fred Roden at the University of Connecticut -- Alfred Tennyson's In Memoriam.

Current and Future

Literature from the nineteenth century onwards

Literature and religion

Christian publishing

Feminist, black, and queer reception of the Bible

Emotions

Sexualities

Digital media

Female authors and readers

Higher Education policy