Dr. Allocco joined the Elon University faculty in 2009 after earning her PhD in Emory University’s Program in West & South Asian Religions. She is the 2019 recipient of Elon University’s Ward Family Excellence in Mentoring Award and the 2012 recipient of Elon’s College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award. Allocco previously held the University’s Distinguished Emerging Scholar professorship in Religious Studies and in 2017 was named the founding Director of Elon’s Multifaith Scholars Program. Allocco teaches courses on the religions of South Asia, particularly Hinduism, as well as Hindu goddesses, ethnography, and gender in Islam. Her research focuses on vernacular Hinduism, especially contemporary Hindu ritual traditions and women’s religious practices in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where she has been studying and conducting ethnographic fieldwork for more than 20 years. In addition to her current research project, Domesticating the Dead: Invitation and Installation Rituals in Tamil South India (see below), Allocco has conducted fieldwork among Tamil populations in Sri Lanka. Allocco’s work is animated by interests in the forms of religious change inspired by the new social and economic realities that characterize a globalizing South Asia, as well as narrative, everyday religion, and gender in urban India.
Amy Allocco