Jana Sawicki

Jana Sawicki is an American philosopher, academic, and author. She is the Morris Professor of Rhetoric at Williams College.

Sawicki's work spans continental philosophy, Foucault, critical theory, social and political philosophy, and Feminist theory and queer theory. She co-edited A Foucault Companion with Timothy O'Leary and Chris Falzon, and a special issue on Foucault and Queer Theory with Shannon Winnubst, as well as authored a book Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body.

Education and early career Sawicki graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy from Sweet Briar College in 1974. She earned an M.A. from Columbia University in 1977, where she also served as a Preceptor. She completed her M.Phil. in 1978, before receiving her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1981.

Sawicki chaired the Department of Philosophy at Williams College from 2003 to 2009 and held the Carl W. Vogt '58 Professorship of Philosophy from 2008 to 2017. Between 2015 and 2018, she directed the Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, followed by an appointment as the Chair of the Philosophy Department until 2022. She has been serving as the Morris Professor of Rhetoric there since 2017. Similarly, Stephen Katz lauded the book as "persuasive and well-elucidated," positioning it as an accessible entry point into the intersection of feminism and Foucault's philosophy. In 2013, she co-edited A Companion to Foucault, a collection of essays that analyzed Foucault's works and engaged with his lecture courses. Ansgar Allen, in his review of this book, called it "an essential tool for future Foucault scholars."

Sawicki has engaged with Michel Foucault's ideas and published an article titled "Foucault and Feminism: Toward a Politics of Difference" in her earlier scholarship, where she applied his methods to explore how embracing difference challenged feminist theory, critiqued the concepts of the revolutionary subject and social totality, and analyzed debates on sexuality and reproductive technologies. Further, she examined Foucault's relevance in rethinking feminism amid neoliberal governmentality, incorporating his work with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's queer feminist perspective to address skepticism about Foucault's ethics. She also contributed to Biopower: Foucault and Beyond, authoring a chapter titled "Precarious Life: Butler and Foucault on Biopolitics," which explored the intersection of biopower, vulnerability, and the normative foundation of critique.

In addition to her books, Sawicki has authored numerous influential articles and book chapters that have shaped contemporary feminist and continental philosophical discourse.

In 2013, she published “Queer Feminism: Cultivating Ethical Practices of Freedom” in Foucault Studies, exploring the relevance of Foucault’s ideas for feminist and queer thought in the context of neoliberal governmentality, drawing on the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to rethink ethical practices beyond identity politics.

Sawicki has also contributed chapters such as “Queering Foucault and the Subject of Feminism” (2006) and “Foucault, Feminism and Questions of Identity” (1994) in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, examining how Foucault’s work informs feminist and queer understandings of subjectivity. Her essays “Foucault and the Discourse of Desire” (2010) and “Foucault’s Pleasures: Desexualizing Queer Politics” (2004) investigate the intersections of desire, pleasure, power, and ethics, while “Foucault and Sexual Freedom: Why Embrace an Ethics of Pleasure?” further explores Foucault’s conception of ethical self‑formation.