Author: Jianfen Chen

Jianfen Chen is a PhD student in Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue. Her research interests include public rhetoric, digital rhetoric, risk communication, intercultural communication, and professional and technical communication.

The coronavirus pandemic is, as Blommaert (2020) indicates, “a textbook example of globalization processes.” Debates on globalization’s essence, its systemic inequalities and its future in a post-pandemic world abound (Fontaine, 2020; Friedman, 2020; Frum 2020). However, a dimension of globalization that has become even more glaring and should interest rhetoricians, cultural theorists and digital humanists is circulation. Besides the transnational circulation of SARS-CoV-2 resulting in efforts to restrict intra/international flow of people and goods, there is also the circulation of new discursive forms related to the pandemic (see Blommaert, 2020). Most importantly, in the face of stay-at-home protocols, life has…

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