(November 2nd, 2018)

I am very pleased to announce my new book contract with Routledge | Taylor & Francis Group for the publication of my academic monograph: Keren Wang, Legal and Rhetorical Foundations of Economic Globalization: An Atlas of Ritual Sacrifice in Late-Capitalism. Routledge intends to publish this book in both hardback and digital formats, and the hardback version is expected to be in print by the end of next year.

This book was developed from my doctoral dissertation, “Three Studies of Ritual Sacrifice in Late Capitalism.” I would like to extend my special thanks to Stephen H. Browne, my dissertation supervisor, and to members of my dissertation advising committee: Larry Catá Backer, Kirt H. Wilson, and Jeremy David Engels. This project would not have been possible without their guidance and mentorship. I would like to also express my gratitude to members of the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University, for their generous continuous support of my Ph.D study and related postdoctoral research.

My forthcoming book examines the rhetoric of political and economic sacrifice under neoliberalism, both within the U.S. and at a global level. While the book contains philosophical and theoretical ideas that would be useful to teach in both advanced undergraduate and graduate courses,  it also delineates a rhetorical theory of sacrifice as a way to address both the general question of the relationship between rhetoric and political community (what Kenneth Burke might frame as the dialectic between identification and division), and the specific issue concerning biopolitics (or who is “made to live and prosper,” at the expense of whom) under late capitalism. The book also contributes to the study of the connection between the theological and the political, as exemplified by Burke in rhetorical studies, in relation to a broad set of discussions revolving round economic globalization.