ADVISOR 

Dr. Niki Kasumi Clements

Colby Selman, a PhD Student in the Rice University Department of Religion, works at the intersection between the study of Christianity in Late Antiquity, Philosophical Anthropology, and Religious Ethics. His research focuses on how late ancient philosophical anthropologies inform the justification or rejection of slave owning practices in the works of early Christian theologians like Gregory of Nyssa. Special attention is given to how thinkers like Gregory use hagiography as a tool to affirm their own theories of the human, and ideal social models.

Colby’s work also focuses on the post-modern reception of thinkers like Gregory of Nyssa, specifically in the writings of Michel Foucault. Colby takes up Foucault’s own study of Christian asceticism to inform his own work on subjectivity and the study of how we as humans can constitute and reconstitute ourselves as ethical subjects.