Amy Allen

Amy Allen is a Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, and she is also the current Department Head. Previously, she was the Parents Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Gender and Women's Studies at Dartmouth College, and was Chair of the Department of Philosophy from 2006-2012. Her research takes a critical approach to feminist approaches of power, examines the relationship between power and autonomy in the constitution of the subject, and attempts to broaden traditional feminist understandings of power to apply to transnational issues.

Allen received a bachelor's degree from Miami University in 1992, and went on to receive her master's and doctorate in philosophy from Northwestern University, in 1992 and 1996 respectively. She spent 1996-1997 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Grinnell College and 1997-1999 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Dartmouth College, before accepting a permanent appointment there. In 2004, she was promoted to Associate Professor and received a cross-appointment in the Women's and Gender Studies Department. She spent a term abroad as Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in 2006, before returning to Dartmouth and chairing the Philosophy department for six years. She is now the Parents Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Women's and Gender Studies.

Besides for her academic appointments, Allen has held a number of other professional roles, including serving as Executive Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, a member of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division's Executive Committee, co-editor in chief of the journal Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, and editor of the Columbia University Press series New Directions in Critical Theory.

Allen has published a large number of refereed papers and book chapters, as well as two books - The Power of Feminist Theory: Domination, Resistance, Solidarity and The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory - with a third volume, The End of Progress: Critical Theory in Postcolonial Times forthcoming. The Power of Feminist Theory was a revised version of Allen's dissertation that focused on assessing pre-existing feminist understandings of power combining the insight offered by poststructuralists with that of normative critical theory, despite the fact that the two camps are often considered to be diametrically opposed. Allen's second book built on the foundations of her first, but focused far more narrowly on the relationship between power and autonomy in the construction of the subject, approaching the question of whether or not it is possible to understand gendered subjects as being simultaneously constituted by power relations and autonomously self-constituting, attempting to bridge the gap between Foucaultian and Habermasian critical theory.