Niki Kasumi Clements is the Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Associate Professor of Religion at Rice University (Houston, USA). Clements researches Michel Foucault’s fascination with Christianity and ethics through his published works and the archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Her first monograph, Sites of the Ascetic Self (Notre Dame Press, 2020), 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 Final Confessions, which analyzes Foucault’s History of Sexuality series through the archives of his notes, drafts, lectures, and monographs over his last fourteen years.
Email address: niki.clements@rice.edu
Institutional webpage: https://profiles.rice.edu/faculty/niki-kasumi-clements