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ABOUT ME:

As a scholar, my research and teaching traverse the intersections of rhetorical theory, transnational legal studies, and political communication, interrogating the symbolic and discursive underpinnings of contemporary governance. My monograph, Legal and Rhetorical Foundations of Economic Globalization: An Atlas of Ritual Sacrifice in Late-Capitalism (Routledge, 2020), examines how ritualistic frameworks render exploitative structures of the prevailing political‑economic system inescapable—or even preferable—offering an interdisciplinary critical lens on the architecture of global development.

Recent publications examine an interlocking set of questions: civic networks and digital activism in East Asia; the rhetorical machinery of the Social Credit System; and the dynamics of silence and imitation as modes of political contestation. Across these threads, my scholarship maps the rhetorical architectures that underwrite power, collective memory, and social control in an increasingly fractured global order.

I am developing a new book, Artificial Intelligence and Human Sacrifice, a prolegomenon to the ways generative technologies and the prospect of artificial superintelligence reshape sacrificial rationalities in governance and development. Across cases from personalized law and labor automation to AI‑augmented advocacy, remote warfare, and polycriminal scam centers, it shows how an “almighty algorithm” operates as a legitimating ritual that offloads injury onto marked populations, reduces persons to standing‑reserve, and quiets the ethical demand of face‑to‑face encounter, even as these systems widen access, accelerate knowledge production, and ease alienated forms of labor. In dialogue with genealogies of human sacrifice and technological disruption, the book asks what, and whom, we are prepared to offer for the blessings of machines, and how algorithmic rhetoric renders those offerings palatable.

Google Scholar Profile | ORCID: 0000-0001-6933-885X

Awards

  • National Communication Association Public Address Division Wrage-Baskerville Top Paper Award, for “A Rhetorical Autopsy of the Architect of Apartheid and its Transnational Implications.” (2024)
  • American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellowship (2022)
  • Visiting Fellowship at the Center for Humanities and Information (2021)
  • Don W. Davis Program in Ethical Leadership Research Award (2018)
  • National Communication Association Top Paper Award, Japan-U.S. Communication Division (2017).
  • National Communication Association Top Paper Award, Chinese Communication Studies Division (2014).
  • Dissertation Fellow, Center for Democratic Deliberation and Center & Institute Fellowship Program (2016)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

  • With Dominic Manthey. “Silent Protest and Cruel Imitation in Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Movement.” In: Quiet Defiance: The Rhetoric of Silent Protest. David Seitz (ed.) Lexington Books (2025): doi.org/10.5771/9781666939002
  • “Legal and Rhetorical Dynamics of Personalized ‘Pillars of Shame’ in the Chinese Social Credit System.”  China Review 24, no. 3 (2024). Available via JSTOR.              
  • “The Legitimation Crisis of the Japanese Constitution: Reflections on Japan’s Judicial Rhetoric and Its Post-WWII Constitutionalization Process.” Communication Law Review, Volume 20, Issue 1, (2020): 1-29. Available via CLR.
  • “Rhetorical Invention of Laws of Sacrifice: Kelo v. New London,” Communication Law Review, Volume 18, Issue 2 (2018): 59-95. Available via CLR.
  • With Nabih Haddah, "Participatory Global Citizenship: Civic Education Beyond Territoriality." Journal of Self-Governance & Management Economics 3, no. 1 (2015). Available via Harvard HOLLIS.
  •  With Backer, Larry Catá. "The emerging structures of socialist constitutionalism with Chinese characteristics: extra-judicial detention and the Chinese constitutional order." Washington International Law Journal 23 (2014): 251. Available via UW Digital Commons.
  • Backer, Larry Catá, Nabih Haddad, Tomonori Teraoka, and Keren Wang. “Democratizing the Global Business and Human Rights Project by Catalyzing Strategic Litigation from the Bottom Up.” Chapter. In The Business and Human Rights Landscape: Moving Forward, Looking Back, edited by Jena Martin and Karen E. Bravo, 254–87. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316155219.010
Other:

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS:

  • “A Rhetorical Autopsy of the Architect of Apartheid and its Transnational Implications (Public Address Division Wrage-Baskerville Top Paper Award).” Presented at the National Communication Association Chinese Communication Studies Division Top Papers Panel, Chicago, (November 22, 2014).
  • “Algorithmic Governmentality & Narrative Structures of AI Policies.” Special guest lecture at East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, June 4, 2024.
  • “Constitutional Dynamics in China-Taiwan Relations: A Historical and Comparative Analysis.” Presentation at Emory International Law Review Symposium on Disputed Territories Across the Globe. Emory University, April 13, 2024.
  • “Demystifying the Historical and Rhetorical Contexts of Chinese Digital Governance Regime,” presentation at the Symposium on China’s Data Governance and Its Impact on US-China Relations.” The Carter Center China Focus. Atlanta: The Carter Center, Sept. 26, 2023. https://chinafocus.info/symposium-data-governance-and-its-impact-on-us-china-relations/
  • “Dasein, ChatGPT, and the Ritology of AI.” Special guest lecture at East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, June 18 2023.
  • "Vulnerability Theory and Digital Intimacy: 'Pillars of Shame' in the Age of Big Data." Presented at the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative Workshop at Emory University School of Law, Atlanta (March 24, 2023).
  • “Social and Moral Engineering in the Age of Big Data: Personalized ‘Pillars of Shame’ and the Chinese Social Credit System.” Lecture hosted by REALC Faculty Spotlight Series at Emory University, Atlanta: Feb 6, 2023.
  • “Legal and Rhetorical Dynamics of Personalized Shaming Rituals in the Chinese Social Credit System.” Presented at the German Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, University of Vienna (November 3, 2022).
  • “Revisiting Classical Rhetoric in Chinese Intellectual History.” Presented at the Association for6 Political Theory Annual Conference, University of Houston (October 28, 2022).
  • “HKGolden and the Emergence of Internet-Nativist-Right Discourse.” Presented at the 2020 Camp Rhetoric conference in University Park, PA. (February 29, 2020)
  • “A Rhetorical Analysis of HKGolden’s ‘Alternative’ Networked Activism.” Presented at the Exploring Social Media: Online Political Rhetoric, Intercultural Fandom Identity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Millennials, and Non-Use panel at the National Communication Association Annual Convention in Baltimore, Maryland (November 16, 2019).
  • “Reexamining Ritual Sacrifice in Late Capitalism,” presented at the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists 2019 Annual Conference in Sydney, Australia (April 27, 2019)
  • With Dominic Manthey, “Play of Democratic Signification: Digital Rhetoric in Hong Kong’s 2014 Pro-Democracy Movement,” presented at the National Communication Association 104th Annual Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, Critical and Cultural Studies Division (November 11th, 2018).
  • With Tomonori Teraoka, "Reflections on the Japanese post-WWII Constitutionalization Process (Top Student Paper Award)." Presented at the National Communication Association Annual Conference Annual Convention, Dallas, TX (November 19, 2017).
  • With Tomonori Teraoka, “Legitimation Crisis of the Japanese Constitution,” presented at Harvard East Asia Society Conference 2017, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (February 25, 2017)
  • “Public Rituals and The Rhetorical Invention of Laws of Sacrifice,” presented at The Sixth “Rhetoric in Society” Conference of the Rhetoric Society of Europe, University of East Anglia, Norwich (July 5th, 2017)
  • “Fractured Legal Theology: Tension between Doxa and Pistis in Chinese Judicial Reform Discourse,” paper presented at the 11th Annual General Conference of the European China Law Studies Association, at the Faculty of Law of the Roma TRE University in Rome (September 24, 2016)
  • “Reexamining Hong Kong’s Political Tension and Rhetoric under of Chinese Socialist System,” presented at the 10th Annual Conference of the European China Law Studies Association, University of Cologne (September 28, 2015)
  • “The Dynamic Role of Strategic Framing in Shaping Social Movement Personae: Analyzing Metaphors of ‘Revolution’ and ‘Movement’ in 2014 Hong Kong Protests.” Presented at the Third International Conference on Asian Studies, International University of Japan, Niigata, Japan: June 20-21, 2015.
  • “A Written Constitution without Functioning Constitutionalism (NCA Top Paper Award)” presented at the Top papers panel - Chinese Communication Studies Division, National Communication Association Annual Conference, Chicago, (November 22, 2014).
  • “International Organizations and Participatory Global Citizenship: Civic Education beyond Territoriality,” (paper presented at the 19th Annual UBC Interdisciplinary Legal Studies Graduate Student Conference, University of British Columbia, Canada, May 8-9, 2014.)
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