The Internet - from "Nuclear Hardened" Networks to Algorithmic Governmentality

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:15:36 +0000

References

Beck, Estee. "Who Is Tracking You?: A Rhetorical Framework for Evaluating Surveillance and Privacy Practices." In Cyber Law, Privacy, and Security: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, pp. 121-138. IGI Global, 2019.

Belk, Russell. “Extended self and the digital world.” Current Opinion in Psychology 10 (2016): 50-54.

Chen, Ning, and Yu Chen. “Smart city surveillance at the network edge in the era of iot: opportunities and challenges.” Smart cities: development and governance frameworks (2018): 153-176.

Introduction to a Brief History of Media

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 02:34:28 +0000

We begin by asking a deceptively simple question: What is media?

At its core, media is any technology that enables the storage, organization, transmission, and dissemination of information.

When we hear the word today, we tend to think of “mass media” — newspapers, television, the internet — technologies that spread information rapidly across wide distances. Commonly, people imagine the story of media beginning with the invention of the electric telegraph in the early 19th century. But is that really where media begins?

MEDIA & VIOLENCE - A Transnational Perspective

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:23:19 +0000

Lesson Module by Keren Wang, updated 4 Nov 2025.

This lesson module examines the contested and ambivalent relationship between media and violence from historical and transnational perspectives.

1. Violence as Ritual & Power: Historical and Global Perspectives

Let's open this session with a reference from Greek mythology: consider the telltale of Prometheus, whose theft of fire from the Olympian gods for humanity’s benefit inadvertently brought both civilization and destruction. Like Prometheus’s fire, the development of media technology simultaneously brings enlightenment and cataclysm.

1.1 Rhetorical Artifacts and Human Sacrifice

The history of the development of writing technology overlaps with the history of war propaganda and human sacrifice.^[1] As early as the Narmer Palette, one of the earliest hieroglyphic artifacts ever found from circa 3200 BCE depicting scenes of conquest and violence:

Similarly, during the height of the Chinese Bronze Age, also known as the Shang dynasty (c. 1250–1046 BC) produced ritual bronze artifacts at monumental proportions -- such as the 833 kg (1,836 lbs) Houmuwu Ding -- one of the heaviest bronze vessel from the ancient world -- and the 13-foot (3.96 m) tall Sanxingdui bronze tree (c. 1200 BC):

"Constitutional Dynamics in China-Taiwan Relations: A Historical and Comparative Analysis" Presentation at Emory International Law Review Symposium on Disputed Territories Across the Globe, 13 April 2024

Fri, 03 May 2024 19:34:56 +0000

I would like to start by extending my heartfelt gratitude to Angelica Paquette, Editor-in-Chief of the Emory International Law Review, and Grayson Walker for their outstanding organization of this special symposium on Disputed Territories across the Globe: A Future of Peace or Change, and particularly this panel on China-Taiwan relations. A special thank you to Hallie Ludsin from Emory’s Center for International and Comparative Law for her valuable insights as our panel respondent today. I’m also grateful to see Professor Larry Catá Backer among us and would like to acknowledge Professor Martha Albertson Fineman for her invaluable guidance on my comparative and critical-legal research. My work is further supported by the American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellowship, for which I am profoundly thankful.

Class slides for Social Movements and Social Change (Emory, FA23)

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 11:20:56 +0000

Class teaching slides for CHN 375W Chinese Political Thought at Emory University, fall 2023

Section on social movements and social change in modern China:

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Class slides - The Hundred Schools of Thought (Chinese Political Thought)

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 10:08:46 +0000

Class PowerPoint slides for CHN375W: Chinese Political Thought/Propaganda (Emory University, Fall 2023): covering the historical evolution and contemporary implications of “The Hundred Schools of Thought” in Chinese governance and political practices.

Persuasion and Propaganda Ancient China (chapter draft), part 2: the Hundred Schools of Thought

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 14:30:03 +0000

The Warring States and the Hundred Schools of Thought

The core of classical Chinese philosophical tradition emerged during a tumultuous period of ancient Chinese history, during which the civilization transitioned from a decentralized feudal system into a unified empire. We begin this section with a brief and high-altitude overview of the historical background for those who are not familiar with ancient Chinese history. The time frame would be the Chunqiu-Zhanguo era (lit., “Periods of Spring and Autumn and the Warring States”) which lasted from c.770 to 221 BCE The Spring and Autumn period of Classical Chinese history, from approximately 771 to 476 BCE. The nominal seat of dynastic power, Zhou Tianzi (lit “Son of Heaven”) had rapidly declined, and in Confucious’ own words, that the “ancient feudal rite and hymns have crumbled （禮樂崩壞）.” It was a time when former Zhou feudal domains became de-facto independent sovereign states. Larger states swallow smaller ones. Rapid land reforms and power restructurings took place across major Chinese states in order to claim economic and military supremacy over their peers. Various great powers rose and fell throughout this period, constantly at war against one other for achieving hegemony over Tianxia. The Warring States period is also when the coin-based cash economy rapidly took off throughout China-proper. Of course this did not happen overnight, but based on ample material evidence, the cash economy did intensify within a relatively short period, as major states began to implement similar types of sweeping bureaucratic governance reforms and centrally managed crop buy-out policies to remain competitive. By the time of the late Warring States era, your “average” peasant say in the state of Wei or Zhao or any major power, not only was paid by the central government, in cash, to purchase his grains for strategic reserve, he is also likely to be drafted every so often, for a fixed term, to perform infrastructure labor or serve in the military, and paid a stipend at least in part in the form of cash coins. Consequently, old feudal aristocratic powers were displaced by an emerging class of scholar-officials, many of whom came from humble, non-noble backgrounds including Confucious and his disciples. Members of this new literati class often traveled throughout China and offered their knowledge and service to the most promising state sponsor. Because of the intense interstate competition and the increasing demand for scholar-officials, philosophies flourished throughout the Chunqiu-Zhanguo era. Early Han historian Sima Qian used the term zhūzǐ bǎijiā (諸子百家), or “Hundred Schools of Thought” to describe this unprecedented expansion and diversification of Chinese intellectual outputs. Many philosophical texts from this historical moment – such as the Analects, Tao Te Ching, and Sun Tzu’s Art of War have become widely known outside of China. See the timeline in figure 2 below for a partial list of key figures from the Hundred Schools of Thought (top row). The timeline also includes contemporaneous Indo-European thinkers at the bottom row for clearer time reference:

Persuasion and Propaganda Ancient China (chapter draft), part 1: Pyromancy and the Invention of the Chinese Writing System

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 17:14:32 +0000

Persuasion and Propaganda Ancient China

（chapter draft, part 1）

by Keren Wang, kwang35@gsu.edu

There are increasing calls to give rhetorics that are historically overlooked within Western academia their overdue consideration.[1] Despite growing interest in comparative and alternative rhetorics, insufficient attention has been paid to one category of crucial contribution to the intellectual history of persuasion and propaganda: the study of nonwestern ancient rhetorical traditions.[2] This chapter provides a sneak preview of the intellectual history of persuasion and propaganda in Ancient China, where a rich and distinct rhetorical tradition flourished for more than three millennia. We begin this chapter by addressing the question of why it is necessary to examine comparative perspectives, followed by looking briefly into the historical origin of Chinese characters – the oldest writing system still in use. Our discussion then proceeds to a high-altitude overview of the hundred schools of thought that emerged during a pivotal moment of Chinese intellectual history and profoundly shaped the arc of Sinic civilizational development.

Presentation at 2018 PSU Social Thought Conference - "Three studies of ritual sacrifice in late-capitalism"

Tue, 01 May 2018 20:43:53 +0000

This presentation highlights a few key excerpts from my doctoral dissertation research:

“The ritual taking of things that are of human value, including the ritual killing of humans, has been continuously practiced for as long as human civilization itself has existed. Sacrifices in the form of state-organized rituals have been observed in many societies throughout history. Existing scholarship also observed an interdependent relationship between ritual sacrifice and the maintenance of political power in a broad set of historical cases, ranging from Shang dynasty China in 10th century BCE to the witch-hunts in early modern Europe. Sacrificial rituals of the past should not be considered fundamentally divorced from our modern world: whereas the formal elements of sacrifice of the past may no longer be recognizable, their substantive political functions do remain, with rhetorical overtones that carry into the politics of the present time. The goal for this project is to give due consideration to the politics of sacrificial rites across a broad set of political-theological traditions, hopefully paving the way to a new unifying understanding of sacrificial rhetorics. This research goal revolves around two primary research tasks that are intimately connected. The first is to provide a working interpretative framework for understanding the politics of ritual sacrifice – one that not only accommodates multidisciplinary, intersectional knowledge of ritual practices, but that can also be usefully employed in the integrated analysis of sacrificial rituals as political rhetoric under divergent historical and societal contexts. The second conducts a series of case studies that cuts across the wide variability of ritual public takings in late-capitalism.”

Ritualism and the Ethos of Chinese Legal Order: presentation at Penn State Law

Sat, 10 Jun 2017 16:39:47 +0000

“Ritualism and the Ethos of Chinese Legal Order,” presented at International Conference: New International Trade and Investment Rules between Globalization and Anti-Globalization, Penn State University, University Park, PA (April 22, 2017)

倬彼雲漢昭回于天

王曰於乎何辜今之人

天降喪亂饑饉薦臻

靡神不舉靡愛斯牲

圭璧既卒寧莫我聽

Majestic is that Milky Way, brightly afloat in the firmament of the heaven.

The King said, O! What crime is chargeable on us now?

That Heaven thus sends down death and disorder, unrelenting famine and hunger grapple us!

Law at the End of the Day: Keren Wang on "Religion in China: Historical and Legal Context" and Chinese-Vatican Relations

Sun, 20 Sep 2015 07:30:05 +0000

[embed]http://imgur.com/XhRs5nT[/embed]

The study of the relationship between the state and religion—especially organized and institutional religion originating in the West and Middle East–is grounded in an important and often overlooked premise. That premise is based on a very specific view of religion and a very historically contextualized understanding of the relationship between the state and religious institutions. Both are grounded in the primacy of the model of religious organization and of state-religion relations developed in the Middle East and Europe (and later spread elsewhere in the globe) centering around Judaism, Jewish state organization and its important evolution under Christianity and Islam, the religions that emerged from it. Much of the national and international discussion of the last several centuries has effectively centered on the way in each of these variants of so-called “Abrahamic” religions (and thier contests for domination within social, cultural and economic space) be manifested, and their relations with states legitimated. Other religious traditions are then folded into the master narrative of law-religion discourse, or treated as exceptions or variations within it.

A Brief Note on Human Sacrifice in Classical Mayan Culture

Tue, 02 Jun 2015 22:27:59 +0000

Mayan Moon Goddess with rabbit, Museum of Fine Arts Boston MA

In my previous post “Human Sacrifice during Shang Dynasty”, I examined the historical background of renji (人祭 / ritual human sacrifice) practiced during Shang dynasty China (c. 1600 BC to 1046 BC). It is important to note that the kind of large-scale human sacrifice practiced by Shang rulers, though extraordinary, is not historically idiosyncratic. Human sacrifice rituals similar to that of renji were also found pre-Colombian Mesoamerica, most notably in Mayan and Aztec societies. [1] As scholars have already performed excellent analyses on the political economy of ritual human killings in Aztec empire (see, The Accursed Share by Georges Bataille), this post will focus only on large-scale human sacrifices as practiced in pre-Colombian Mayan society.

History on Keren Wang