He is now the Raymond Wagner Professor of Literary Studies in the English Department at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

Before that, he was reader and then professor of English literature at the University of Glasgow, 1995–2000, and before that he was a research fellow of the British Academy, 1991-4.

He worked with Alasdair Gray on his Book of Prefaces and is a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian and other British newsprints.

His latest volume, William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man, was published by Oxford University Press in the UK on 20 October 2008.

[1] In November 2013, Wu was interviewed, as scholar, for the documentary Poetry of Witness, directed by independent filmmakers Billy Tooma and Anthony Cirilo, alongside his Georgetown University colleague, Carolyn Forché.