Hao-Yu Hu

Thesis title: British Literary Decadence and Queer Temporalities

Biography

Background

Hao-Yu is a second-year PhD student in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, where he serves as an assistant editor for FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Cultures and the Arts. His doctoral thesis, funded by the Ministry of Education Overseas PhD Scholarship, Taiwan, examines British Decadent Literature through the theoretical framework of queer temporality, with a particular focus on the works of Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), and Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper).

Hao-Yu studied Foreign Languages and Literatures as an undergraduate student at National Taiwan University from 2018-2022. He went on to study for a Master's in Romantic and Victorian Literary Studies at Durham University, UK, and completed the degree with distinction in 2023.

 

Qualifications

Current PhD student, University of Edinburgh.

MA in Romantic and Victorian Literary Studies, Durham University, UK.

BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University, Taiwan.

 

Responsibilities & affiliations

LLC, University of Edinburgh - GH Tutor

FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Cultures and the Arts - Assistant Editor

British Association of Decadence Studies - Member

British Association of Victorian Studies - Member

British Association of Modernist Studies - Member

Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies - Member

International Walter Pater Society - Member

The Oscar Wilde Society - Member

 

Undergraduate teaching

Literary Studies 2B: English Literature in the World, post-1789 (tutorials)

Research summary

Hao-Yu's research interests include Decadence, Aestheticism, and modernism, fin-de-siècle arts and culture, Victorian literature, gender studies and queer theory, comparative and world literature. He is also interested in aesthetics and literary genres such as the Gothic, fairy tales, drama, and life-writing.

Past research interests

Hao-Yu's MA thesis ‘“Exquisite Grotesque”: Oscar Wilde, Decadence, and Queer Orientalism’ engages Orientalism and performance studies to examine Wilde's appropriations of Orientalist tropes in his Decadent writing.

Affiliated research centres

Papers delivered

‘Decadence, Death, and the Queer Suspension of Time in Walter Pater’s “Emerald Uthwart”’, Romance, Revolution & Reform 2026 Conference: Sex in the Long Nineteenth Century, Sterling University, UK, 15th January 2026

‘Transience, Transfixion, Transcendence: Death and the Queer Moment in Walter Pater’s Imaginary Portraits’, Trans/Pater: 2025 Conference of the International Walter Pater Society, Cornell University, US, 5th-7th September 2025

‘Aestheticism, Decadence, and Queer Temporality in Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean’, Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies World Congress 2025, University of Birmingham, UK, 17th-20th July 2025

‘Oscar Wilde’s Decadent Modernism: The Sphinx and the Textuality of Desire’, New Work in Modernist Studies 14, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 13th December 2024

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