Colena Sesanker, Ph.D.

Colena Sesanker Image
Social Sciences Adjunct Faculty

Department of Human Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
About Colena

I’m UConn born and raised - in higher education, anyway. I started my college education with a degree in physiological psychology and then got interested in philosophy as it relates to how our minds interact with and interpret the world around us. 

I spent quite a few years focused on mathematical and scientific constructivism: on the ways in which our minds create mathematical and other theoretical structures as tools to make sense of the world.   But, these days, I’m more focused on social constructions: on how we create our selves. In particular, how it’s possible to construct one’s identity and express one’s freedom within social networks and languages whose constructions serve to oppress us or fail to accommodate our freedom in many ways. 

I’ve been teaching philosophy for about 10 years.

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Research Interests
  • Non-classical logic
  • Autonomy
  • Oppression and resistance movements
  • Epistemic warrant
  • Structural equations - accounts of grounding
    • Courses Taught
    • Philosophy 101
    • Ethics
    • Medical Ethics
    • Non-Western Comparative Philosophy (Indian, Chinese and Africana)
    • Men, Women, Issues (structured around feminist theory and contemporary race and gender issues)
    • Logic
    Courses in Development
    • Philosophy of Science
    • Limits and Objectivity (the qualia problem of consciousness, incompleteness in mathematics, the is/ought problem in ethics, the problem of free will…)
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