FOUCAULT’S CONFESSIONS :: A SERIES, May 4-June 3, 2021, Rice University
Over five weeks in the month of May and the beginning of June, an international group of scholars engage the work of Michel Foucault at the intersection of ethics, power, and Christianity in the context of the 2018 Éditions Gallimard publication of Les Aveux de la chair and its 2021 translation as Confessions of the Flesh. Foucault’s work and biography are not without controversy and we invite both critical and charitable engagement.
Foucault’s Christianities, May 19, 2021, Foucault’s Confessions : A Series, Rice University
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Menil Collection, March 2, 2021, In Dialogue: On Acedia and Specters of Noon with Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla on their exhibit, Specters of Noon (2020-2021); a public dialogue with the artists and Jonathan Zecher.
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DiverseWorks & Open Dance Project, January 30, 2021, Power, Sex, & Climate Change, a public roundtable for ‘All the Devils Are Here’: A Tempest in the Galapagos (May 2021).
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“Cassian’s Therapies of Desire,” Emotions and Clinical Communication in Antiquity, Australian Catholic University, October 2020
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Connections: Humanizing the Humanities, A Conversation with Jeffrey Kripal and Niki Kasumi Clements, Rice University, October 2020; Rice University News Link.
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INVITED TALKS
2022
“Is Autonomy Worth Redeeming?” Redeeming Autonomy: Agency, Vulnerability, and Relationality Seminar, Australian Catholic University in Rome.
2022
“Ethical Formation through Critical Deformation,” Deformation Seminar, Villanova University.
2022
“Care of the Self as Parresiast Resistance,” Practices of Self in Antiquity Workshop, University of Virginia.
2021
“Foucault’s Genealogies of the Flesh,” Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity, Oxford University.
2021
“True Confessions: Foucault in the Archives,” Religious Studies Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania.
2021
“Foucault’s Christianities,” Foucault’s Confessions, Rice University.
2021
“In Dialogue: Allora & Calzadilla, Specters of Noon,” Menil Collection, Houston.
2020
“Cassian’s Therapy of Desire,” Early Christian Studies Seminar & History of Emotions Symposium, Australian Catholic University.
2019
“Technologies of the Ascetic Self: τέλος in John Cassian and Michel Foucault,” International Kosmoi Conference, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
2019
“Foucault the Confessor,” The Elizabeth A. Clark Center for Late Ancient Studies, Duke University.
2018
“Foucault, Christianity, and an Aesthetics of Existence,” Religion and Critical Thought Colloquium, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University.
2018
“Foucault’s Christianities,” Philosophy of Religion Workshop & Early Christianity Workshop, University of Chicago Divinity School.
2017
“Medicalizing Melancholia: The Noonday Demon from Antiquity to the Present,” The History & Culture of Diseases and Healing Seminar Series, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health, UTHealth.
2017
“An Ascetic Art of Living: Extending the Turn to Late Antiquity,” Rice Workshop in Humanistic Ethics, Department of Philosophy, Rice University.
2016
“Ethical Know-How and Christian Contemplative Practices,” International Symposium for Contemplative Studies 2016, Mind and Life Institute.
2016
Contributor, National Council for the Social Studies Appendix on Religious Studies, Co-sponsored by the American Academy of Religion and Religious Freedom Center, Washington D.C.
2016
“Ascetic Discrētiō and Philosophical Critique in the Contemporary Study of Religion,” Symposium on The Future of the Philosophy of Religion, Boston University.
2013
“Affectus as Ethical Disposition: On John Cassian’s Reading Practices,” Brown-Yale-Princeton Ethics Colloquium, Yale University.
REFEREED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2022
“Examining Religious Ethics in the University,” Society of Christian Ethics, Costa Mesa, CA.
2021
Foucault Seminar, American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, TX.
2021
Review panel of William Schweiker and David Clairmont’s Religious Ethics: Meaning & Method, Ethics Unit, American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, TX.
2021
“ ‘Care of the self” (ἐπιμελεία ἑαυτοῦ) in Gregory of Nyssa and Michel Foucault,” North American Patristics Society, Chicago, IL. (Plus, lightning talk on Foucault.)
2021
“Foucault and Religious Ethics Beyond Morality,” Society of Muslim Ethics, Society of Christian Ethics, Society of Jewish Ethics Roundtable.
2020
Review panel on my monograph, Sites of the Ascetic Self: John Cassian and Christian Ethical Formation, Philosophy of Religion Section, American Academy of Religion.
2019
“A Typology of Emotion, Affect, and Feeling for the Study of Religion and Cognition,” Religion, Affect, and Emotion Unit and Science, Technology, and Religion Unit, American Academy of Religion, San Diego, CA.
2019
“Virginity as an Art of Life: Michel Foucault on Gregory of Nyssa’s Περὶ παρθενίας,” XVIII International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
2018
“Genealogically Engaging the Concepts of Critical Subjectivity,” Contemplative Studies Unit, American Academy of Religion, Denver, CO.
2018
“Technologies of the Ascetic Self: Reconsidering Foucault via Cassian,” North American Patristics Society, Chicago, IL.
2017
“Form and Feeling in Cassian’s Liturgical Practices,” Patristic, Medieval, Renaissance Conference, Villanova University, Villanova, PA.
2017
“Integral Emotions in Cassian’s Ascetic Subjectivity,” North American Patristics Society, Chicago, IL.
2016
“Ascetic Eros and Foucault,” Critical Theory and Discourses on Religion Group, American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, TX.
2016
“Academic Anxieties in the Study of Religion,” Theology and Religious Reflection Section, American Academy of Religion, San Antonio, TX.
2016
“Material Minds and Subtle Bodies: On the Integrating Ethics of John Cassian,” Patristic, Medieval, Renaissance Conference, Villanova University, Villanova, PA.
2016
“Demons, Depression, and the Dangers of Naps: Depathologizing ἀκηδία with John Cassian,” North American Patristics Society, Chicago, IL.
2015
“Ritual Reading and Affective Shaping: John Cassian and Late Antique Technologies of the Self,” Cognitive Science of Religion, Religion, Affect, and Emotion, Science, Technology, and Religion, SBL Religious Experience in Antiquity Groups, American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA.
2015
“Ritual Reading and the Emotions: John Cassian and Cognitive Science of Religion,” Philosophy of Religion Section, American Academy of Religion, Atlanta, GA.
2015
“Cassian’s Conlationes and an Affective Ethics of Reading,” 17th International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
2013
“The Ethical Force of the Affective: John Cassian and Late Antique Ethics,” Theology and Religious Reflection Section, American Academy of Religion, Baltimore, MD.
2012
“Body-brains that Matter: John Cassian and Ethics of Late Antiquity,” Body and Religion Group, American Academy of Religion, Chicago, IL.
2012
“The Embodied Ethics of Asceticism: A Case Study of John Cassian,” North American Patristics Society, Chicago, IL.
2012
“John Cassian and Embodied Ethics,” Regional Meeting, American Academy of Religion, New Brunswick, NJ.
2011
“Challenges to Interiority: Foucault, Cassian, and Pre-Modern Sensibilities,” Early Cultures Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference, University of California, Irvine, CA.