Duc Dau

I specialise in literature (19th century onwards), screen media, digital media, and bi+ research. Further, I started submitting poetry to literary journals in 2025, and in the same year won the Annette Cameron Award for an emerging poet and was shortlisted for two other prizes including the Tom Collins Poetry Prize.

Author of Sex, Celibacy, and Deviance: The Victorians and the Song of Songs (2024) and Touching God: Hopkins and Love (2012), as well as co-editor of Queer Victorian Families: Curious Relations in Literature (2015), my articles have appeared in such journals as Critical Social Policy, Media International Australia, Disability Studies Quarterly, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Australian Literary Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture, Victorian Poetry, Religion and Literature, and Literature and Theology.

My latest book, Sex, Celibacy, and Deviance: The Victorians and the Song of Songs (2024), is published with The Ohio State University Press. 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 romance, sexuality, gender roles, and marriage in Victorian and early twentieth-century literature and culture. CHOICE classifies the book as highly recommended. The project was funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, was awarded the Australasian Victorian Studies Association's Barbara Garlick Book Prize (Runner-up) and was a finalist in the American Academy of Religion Book Award: Textual Studies.

Forthcoming pieces include a chapter a chapter on Amazon’s Alexa smart speakers, domestic violence, and surveillance capitalism for Surveillance and Social Justice: Big Data Politics, Predictions and Potentials; and a chapter on queer forms of care in Contemporary Love Studies, Vol. 2: What’s Sex Got to Do with It?

As lead or sole investigator, I have attracted $420,000 in research funding. The main sources are listed below:

University of Western Australia
Alumni Fund Grants (2016)
Total funding: $20,000

Australian Research Council
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (ARC DECRA) (2013-2016)
Total funding: $295,363

University of Western Australia
UWA ECR Fellowship Support Program (2013-2016)
Total funding: $29,142

University of Western Australia
Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) (2000-2003)
Total Funding: $60,295

University of Western Australia
Winthrop Scholarship (2000)
Total funding: $7,500

Travel awards from the North American Victorian Studies Association, Australasian Victorian Studies Association, UWA Faculty of Arts, UWA Alumni Funds.