{"id":9601,"date":"2017-11-14T10:56:07","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T15:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/?post_type=profile&#038;p=9601"},"modified":"2026-02-19T09:23:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:23:55","slug":"petrus-liu","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/petrus-liu\/","title":{"rendered":"Petrus Liu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Spring 2026 Office Hours: Tuesdays 1:00-2:00 and Thursdays 3:30-5:30.<\/strong><span style=\"font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif;\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>Petrus Liu is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature and of Women\u2019s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (Chinese, German, and Latin) from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, and previously taught at Cornell University and Yale-NUS College before joining BU in 2017. His research interests lie at the intersection of queer theory and Marxist cultural criticism, spanning modern Chinese and comparative literature, digital media, and new social movements in the global South. He is currently working on a new project on value-form theory and Marxist interpretations of culture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He is the author of three scholarly monographs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cornellpress.cornell.edu\/book\/9781933947624\/stateless-subjects\/#bookTabs=1\">Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History<\/a><\/em> (Cornell East Asia Series, 2011)<\/li>\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dukeupress.edu\/queer-marxism-in-two-chinas\">Queer Marxism in Two Chinas<\/a><\/em> (Duke University Press, 2015), which received Honorable Mention for the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Award<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dukeupress.edu\/the-specter-of-materialism\"><em>The Specter of Materialism: Queer Theory and Marxism in the Age of the Beijing Consensus<\/em><\/a> (Duke University Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 Alan Bray Memorial Award. This work offers a new approach to the political economy of sexuality through a decentered history of global capitalism\u2019s recent mutations and queer embodiment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Prof. Liu is also coeditor (with Lisa Rofel) and cotranslator of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dukeupress.edu\/platinum-bible-of-the-public-toilet\">Platinum Bible of the Public Toilet<\/a><\/em> (Duke University Press, 2024), a collection of queer fiction by Chinese writer Cui Zi\u2019en.<\/p>\n<p>His other publications include the coedited special issue of the journal <em>positions: asia critique,<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/blackwells.co.uk\/bookshop\/product\/Beyond-the-Straights-by-Petrus-Liu-Lisa-Rofel\/9780822367376\">\u201cBeyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics,\u201d<\/a> <span>which received the Modern Language Association\u2019s Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) Award for Best Journal Special Issue of 2010. He has also published three collections of film commentary released simultaneously in English, Chinese, Spanish, and French, and journals articles in <em>Social Text; South Atlantic Quarterly; Modern Language Quarterly; GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; Feminist Studies; positions: asia critique; The Funambulist; Asian Exchange; Modern Chinese Literature and Culture; Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature; Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; Inter-Asia Cultural Studies; Genre en Action; Kaos Queer+; Sexuality Policy Watch; Router: A Journal of Cultural Studies; Refeng xueshu;<\/em> and <em>The China Journal.<\/em> His work has been translated into Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Turkish, and Russian. In March 2025, Liu\u2019s scholarship was the subject of a discussion forum in a special issue of <em>Dialogues in Human Geography.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Prof. Liu serves on the executive editorial board of <em>Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory<\/em> and is a member of the editorial collective of <em>Inter-Asia Cultural Studies<\/em> and the standing review board of Hong Kong\u2019s Research Grants Council.<\/p>\n<p>Prof. Liu has been the recipient of fellowships from the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Berlin, the J Y Pillay Global-Asia Programme, and the Telluride House. His research has been supported by two multiyear grants from the Ford Foundation. In 2023, he received Boston University\u2019s Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/petrus-liu\/cui_cover_front_alt-border16403\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17867\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/Cui_cover_front_alt-border16403-424x636.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"424\" height=\"636\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17867\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/Cui_cover_front_alt-border16403-424x636.jpg 424w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/Cui_cover_front_alt-border16403-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/Cui_cover_front_alt-border16403-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/Cui_cover_front_alt-border16403-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/Cui_cover_front_alt-border16403-400x600.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/Cui_cover_front_alt-border16403.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 424px) 100vw, 424px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/petrus-liu\/specter-of-materialism\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17174\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/specter-of-materialism-424x636.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17174\" width=\"424\" height=\"636\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/specter-of-materialism-424x636.jpg 424w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/specter-of-materialism-400x600.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/specter-of-materialism.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 424px) 100vw, 424px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/petrus-liu\/queer-marxism\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17170\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/queer-marxism-424x636.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17170\" width=\"424\" height=\"636\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/queer-marxism-424x636.jpg 424w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/queer-marxism-400x600.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/queer-marxism.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 424px) 100vw, 424px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/petrus-liu\/stateless-subjects\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17171\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/stateless-subjects-411x636.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17171\" width=\"411\" height=\"636\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/stateless-subjects-411x636.jpeg 411w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/stateless-subjects-388x600.jpeg 388w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/stateless-subjects.jpeg 419w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 411px) 100vw, 411px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/petrus-liu\/beyond-the-straights\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17175\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/wll\/files\/2017\/11\/beyond-the-straights.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17175\" width=\"400\" height=\"457\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/petrus-liu\/stateless-subjects\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17171\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9557,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9557"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20166,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/9601\/revisions\/20166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}