Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Associate Professor of Religion, Rice University
A Welcome & Introductory Framings
Niki Kasumi Clements is the Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Associate Professor of Religion at Rice University. Clements researches Michel Foucault’s fascination with Christianity and ethics through his published works and the archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and for 2024 is an invited researcher through the DEA program of the FMSH/EHESS to continue her research collaborations in France. Her first monograph, Sites of the Ascetic Self, engages the ethics of John Cassian (c.360-c.435) through Foucault’s interest in this late ancient ascetic as part of his genealogy of the desiring subject. Clements is at work on her second monograph, Foucault the Confessor, on Foucault’s engagement with the history of Christianity as a fulcrum in his turn towards ancient sexual ethics and the possibilities for critiquing power through arts of living. She is currently completing a short monograph, Foucault’s Histories of Sexuality, which analyzes Foucault’s History of Sexuality series through the archives of his notes, drafts, lectures, and monographs over his last decade. With James Faubion and Daniel Wyche, she is the co-editor of Foucault’s Confessions (under contract with Columbia University Press).