Yasna Kalanaki
Education
Professional Bio
Yasna Kalanaki (she/they) is a dual-title Ph.D. student in the Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies departments at Penn State. She received a B.A. in Philosophy (with honors) with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2023. Her areas of interest include German idealism (primarily Hegel), post-structuralism, decolonial theory, feminist philosophy, focusing on questions on ontology and epistemology. In particular, her research engages and problematizes the intersection of knowledge and power by deconstructing Western epistemologies and exploring forms of liberatory decolonial being, expression, and embodiment. This entails an engagement with Caribbean and Latinx decolonial thought, as well as, queer theory, affect theory, and Sufi Islamic mysticism.
