My Research

My research program explores and expands upon one of Mahatma Gandhi’s foundational insights: that at its core Western culture is a culture of violence. There is violence in how we think, how we speak, and how we act, toward ourselves, toward other beings, and toward the natural world. People in the West often voice an aspiration for making the world a better, more just and joyful place; if this is to happen, it will not be through technological innovation or military adventurism but through spiritual change inspired by wise and moving rhetoric. People must be awakened to the omnipresence of violence and then persuaded that a change is in their best interest. Then, they must be shown how to change – how to identify the violence that lives inside their hearts and minds and how to purge themselves of this malady. That is the point of my research – helping people notice how they participate in a culture of violence, persuading them that it would be better not to participate in this culture, and then providing them with the wisdom and practices necessary to reject this culture in favor of a culture of peace.  

We live in an era defined by a sense of separation, even in the midst of networked connectivity. As cultural climates sour and divisive political structures spread, we are left wondering about our ties to each other. Consequently, there is no better time than now to reconsider ideas of unity.

In The Ethics of Oneness, published in March 2021 from the University of Chicago Press, Jeremy David Engels reads the Bhagavad Gita alongside the works of American thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Drawing on this rich combination of traditions, Engels presents the notion that individuals are fundamentally interconnected in their shared divinity. In other words, everything is one. If the lessons of oneness are taken to heart, particularly as they were expressed and celebrated by Whitman, and the ethical challenges of oneness considered seriously, Engels thinks it is possible to counter the pervasive and problematic American ideals of hierarchy, exclusion, violence, and domination.

The Art of Gratitude (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018).

In this book, I investigate how Americans have been taught to talk about gratitude—and how we might do a better job expressing this emotion to promote a healthier, more robust democratic culture.

“With an eye toward providing a healthy foundation for a democratic society, Engels makes the revolutionary proposal to reconstitute ‘gratitude’ as an emotion, idea, and value by including it with other democratic values such as equality and freedom. Injecting new life into traditional but flawed values is no small task, and Engels proposes searching far afield for new resources … Highly recommended.” — CHOICE

“There is no more urgent question before us in the US today than how to create a vigorous, non-resentful democratic community. Jeremy Engels’s The Art of Gratitude is a provocative meditation on different conceptions of that emotion and its political role, with attractive Walt Whitmanesque conclusions about joy and comradeship. Even people who disagree with many of the book’s historical claims, as I do, can find fun and insight in the critical engagement.” — Martha C. Nussbaum, The University of Chicago

“In his passionately argued book, The Art of Gratitude, Engels advances the position that this seemingly benign and often celebrated emotion has become ‘one of the primary means by which we are governed, managed, and controlled today’ … The Art of Gratitude speaks with a powerful sermonic voice that challenges us to consider what practices and struggles we are prepared to engage in to create a world for which we can be thankful.” — Nathan Crick, Quarterly Journal of Speech

“With this third book on emotion in a democratic setting … Jeremy Engels stands as a key contributor to the current reorientation towards emotion in rhetorical studies … The Art of Gratitude is a timely contribution to the age-old question of the role of emotion in rhetoric and politics and offers a strong statement on the centrality of emotion to cognition and persuasion.” — Lisa Storm Villadsen, Rhetoric Society of Europe’s Newsletter

The Politics of Resentment: A Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2015).

In this book, I explore how resentment became a central emotion in American political discourse.

“Challenging in its call for reinvigorated rhetorical criticism, this is a book that makes us think.” —David Zarefsky, former president of the National Communication Association and of the Rhetoric Society of America

Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the Early Republic (Michigan State, 2010).

This book, based on my doctoral dissertation at the University of Illinois, maps the rhetoric of enemyship. Unlike friendship, whose bonds are forged by mutual affection, enemyship fabricates bonds of mutual antagonism for the enemy.