Rate My Professor Cuncun Wu

Cuncun Wu served as Senior Lecturer and Convenor of Chinese in the School of Arts at the University of New England from December 2007 to August 2010. She earned her PhD in Chinese Studies from the University of Melbourne in 2002. Prior to her appointment at the University of New England, she held academic positions including at Nankai University in China. Following her time in Australia, she joined the University of Hong Kong in 2010 as Associate Professor in the School of Chinese, advancing to full Professor in Chinese Literature in 2017 and serving as Head of School from 2015 to 2021. Wu's research centers on gender and sexuality in traditional Chinese literature, with key interests in women's history, the history of pornography, and homosexuality in Chinese history. Her scholarship examines social and cultural dynamics through literary sources from late imperial China.

Wu has authored and edited several influential books, including Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), which analyzes male homoerotic culture during the Qing dynasty; Homoeroticism in Imperial China: A Sourcebook, co-authored with Mark Stevenson (Routledge, 2012); and Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature: Models, Genres, Subversions and Traditions, edited with Mark Stevenson (Brill, 2017). She also published 戲外之戲：清中晚期京城的戲園文化與梨園私寓制 (Hong Kong University Press, 2017) and 明清社會性愛風氣 (People's Literature Publishing House, 2000). Notable articles include 'Speaking of Flowers: Theatre, Public Culture, and Homoerotic Writing in Nineteenth-Century Beijing' (Asian Theatre Journal, 2010) and 'Pornographic Modes of Expression and Nascent Chinese Modernity in Late Imperial China' (Modernism/modernity, 2016). At the University of New England, she served as Chief Investigator on Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant DP110102651, funding research into flower guides, prostitution, and theatrical culture in Qing Beijing. Wu received a Center for Chinese Studies research grant in 2007 and was a finalist for the 2020 Australia China Alumni Award for Research and Science. Her work has been translated into Japanese and Korean, contributing significantly to international understandings of cultural history in China.