Elizabeth A. Clark is the John Carlisle Kilgo Professor of Religion at Duke University.
A scholar of early Christian history, her work has focused on issues of women, sexuality,
asceticism, heresy and orthodoxy, Biblical exegesis, and, more recently, theoretical
approaches to the study of early Christianity. Among her books are Jerome, Chrysostom,
and Friends: Essays and Translations (1979); Women in the Early Church (1983); Ascetic
Piety and Women's Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (1986); The Origenist
Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (1992); an
anthology entitled Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (1997); and Reading
Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (1999). A member of the
National Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is co-editor of the The Journal of Early
Christian Studies and of Church History. She has served as President of the American
Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the North American
Patristics Society. Her next book will explore how recent debates between and among
historians and theorists might prove enlightening for studentsof late ancient Christian
texts. In her paper at the conference, Professor Clark will discuss the various items from
the Confessions that Augustine does not retract, all the things he leaves out of
the Confessions that we know from other sources. Let us say that she will
address the gaps in the Confessions.
