Andrea Allen

Andrea S. Allen research has addressed matters of race, sexuality, gender, violence, and religion in Brazil and the African Diaspora. Through a focus on LGBTQ Brazilians, especially Afro-Brazilian lesbian women, her work explores the effects of marginalization from an embodied perspective. In interrogating the everyday, her research prioritizes lived experiences as an essential locus of inquiry when contemplating the contradictions and dissonances of human existence. Dr. Allen has conducted ethnographic research related to the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, same-sex sexuality, and gender. Her first book Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) focused on the experiences of lesbian women in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

Dr. Allen is currently working on a second book project about LGBT evangelical Brazilians, race, religious identity, and sexual subjectivity.

Education

PhD, Harvard

Major Awards and Grants

Martha McCain Faculty Research Fellowship, Queer Trans Research Lab, Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, 2021-2022
Connaught New Researcher Award, University of Toronto, 2020-2023
Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund, The Reed Foundation, 2013, 2016
Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, 2008

Publications

2023. “Ishmael at the Table of Abraham: Black Queer Religious Hermeneutics and Afro-Brazilian LGBTQ Evangelicals.” Religion and Society 14.1: 26-4

2023 “Neither black nor Queer: Evangelicalism and Groundless Theology in Brazil.” Gender, Place & Culture 31.8: 1-22.

2023. Allen, Andrea S., and Lemos, T. M. “On Donors and Daughters: The Language of Queer Kinship,” American Ethnologist website (28 March 2023).

2023. “Antiracist Visual Politics of Afro-Brazilians.” Invited Roundtable Review of Reighan Gillam, Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media, in Black Perspectives, African American Intellectual History Society website (April 4, 2023).

2021. “Black Agenda Report Book Forum: Andrea S. Allen’s Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships.” Roberto Sirvento. Black Agenda Report (January 27 2021).

2017. Book Review of Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil’s Sexual Economy, by Gregory Mitchell in Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 22.3: 610-612.

2015. Violence and Desire in Brazilian Lesbian Relationships. New York: Palgrave MacMillan,

2012. “‘Brides’ without Husbands: Lesbians in the Afro-Brazilian Religion Candomblé,” in Transforming Anthropology 20.1 (2012): 17-31.  Reprinted in Religion, Sexuality and Spirituality, edited by Carole Cusack and Jason Prior. New York: Routledge, 2015.

2009. Review of José Curto and Renée Soulodre-La France, Africa and the Americas: Interconnections during the slave trade, in H-AfrArts, H-Net Reviews (February 2009).

2008. “Candomblé: An Afro-Brazilian Religion.” In Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora, edited by Carole Boyce Davies. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO: 256-257.

2008. Review of Mikelle Smith Omari-Tunkara, Manipulating the Sacred: Yoruba Art, Ritual, and Resistance in Brazilian Candomblé, in H-AfrArts, H-Net Reviews (February 2008).

2002. Linda Barnes, Andrea Allen, Melicia Charles, Azande Mangeango, and Kenneth L. Fox. “Healing in Immigrant Communities of the African Diaspora of Boston.” In Religious Healing in Boston: Report from the Field, edited by Susan Sered. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University Divinity School, (2002): 73-77.

Interviews

2021. “U of T's Andrea Allen studies the 'invisible' Black women of Brazil’s LGBTQ community.” U of T News. Cynthia McDonald. July 8.

2020. AfroPop Worldwide podcast: “Closeup: Drumming as A Resistance Movement.” Public Radio Exchange, July 7.

2020    Between, Across, and Through podcast: “Sex, Love, and Passion in Brazil.” Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto.  May 1.