Amy L Allocco
Biographic Data
| ID | 4587442 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amy L Allocco |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amy L |
| FAMILY NAME | Allocco |
| SIGNATURE | ALLOCCO A L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Elon University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8591-2137 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Sweetening and Intensification: Currents Shaping Hindu Practices
Insistence, Persistence, and Resistance in Tamil Hindu Rituals to Call the Dead
Insistence, Persistence, and Resistance in Tamil Hindu Rituals to Call the Dead
Alcohol, Suicide, and Gendered Protest in Tamil Hindu Invitations to the Dead
Bringing the Dead Home: Hindu Invitation Rituals in Tamil South India
Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Tamil-speaking South India, this article presents one Hindu invitation ritual to return dead relatives known as pūvāṭaikkāri to the world of the living and install them as household deities. This two-day ceremony demonstrates that prevailing scholarly perceptions of death and what follows it in Hindu traditions have constrained our ability to appreciate other models for ritual relationshi…
Shifting Technologies of Reflection: Intergenerational Relationships and the Entanglements of Field and Home
This article focuses on the intergenerational gifts and relationships that have structured my experience of the flows between home and the field in order to highlight the deeply intersubjective and relational aspects of fieldwork. It considers the shifting technologies of reflection—the diverse forms of field-writing that I produced at different stages as intertextual mediations of my fieldworlds—present in an archive chronicling twenty-five year…
Vernacular Practice, Gendered Tensions, and Interpretive Ambivalence in Hindu Death, Deification, and Domestication Narratives
This article focuses on a Tamil Hindu woman named Aaru, who embodied the Goddess in possession performances from age thirteen, resisted marriage through her twenties, and committed suicide at twenty--nine. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Aaru and her family conducted between 2006 and 2019, it analyses narratives concerning her untimely death, subsequent deification, and eventual domestication as a pūvāṭaikkāri. It highlight…
Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Asian Religion
Fear, Reverence and Ambivalence: Divine Snakes in Contemporary South India
In contemporary South Indian Hinduism, nagas are ambivalently imaged: they are divine beings with the capacity to bless as well as to curse. In addition to their primary association with fertility, these divinized non-human animals are perceived as particularly receptive to women's concerns (healing and familial prosperity) and are widely worshipped to obtain these blessings. The ritual propitiation of snake deities is overwhelmingly the practice…
Cacophony or Coherence: Ethnographic Writing and Competing Claims to Ritual and Textual Authority
This essay describes the challenges to ethnographic writing that are raised by multiplicity, contradiction, and conflicting narratives in the fieldwork process. Specifically, the essay examines multiple and sometimes opposing articulations of the causes for, and ritual treatments of, a malignant horoscopic condition called nāga dōsam (snake blemish) in contemporary South India. This examination raises questions about the relationships between tex…
Fear, Reverence and Ambivalence: Divine Snakes in Contemporary South India
In contemporary South Indian Hinduism, nagas are ambivalently imaged: they are divine beings with the capacity to bless as well as to curse. In addition to their primary association with fertility, these divinized non-human animals are perceived as particularly receptive to women's concerns (healing and familial prosperity) and are widely worshipped to obtain these blessings. The ritual propitiation of snake deities is overwhelmingly the practice…
Vernacular Practice, Gendered Tensions, and Interpretive Ambivalence in Hindu Death, Deification, and Domestication Narratives
This article focuses on a Tamil Hindu woman named Aaru, who embodied the Goddess in possession performances from age thirteen, resisted marriage through her twenties, and committed suicide at twenty--nine. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Aaru and her family conducted between 2006 and 2019, it analyses narratives concerning her untimely death, subsequent deification, and eventual domestication as a pūvāṭaikkāri. It highlight…
Bringing the Dead Home: Hindu Invitation Rituals in Tamil South India
Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Tamil-speaking South India, this article presents one Hindu invitation ritual to return dead relatives known as pūvāṭaikkāri to the world of the living and install them as household deities. This two-day ceremony demonstrates that prevailing scholarly perceptions of death and what follows it in Hindu traditions have constrained our ability to appreciate other models for ritual relationshi…
Cacophony or Coherence: Ethnographic Writing and Competing Claims to Ritual and Textual Authority
This essay describes the challenges to ethnographic writing that are raised by multiplicity, contradiction, and conflicting narratives in the fieldwork process. Specifically, the essay examines multiple and sometimes opposing articulations of the causes for, and ritual treatments of, a malignant horoscopic condition called nāga dōsam (snake blemish) in contemporary South India. This examination raises questions about the relationships between tex…
Fear, Reverence and Ambivalence: Divine Snakes in Contemporary South India
In contemporary South Indian Hinduism, nagas are ambivalently imaged: they are divine beings with the capacity to bless as well as to curse. In addition to their primary association with fertility, these divinized non-human animals are perceived as particularly receptive to women's concerns (healing and familial prosperity) and are widely worshipped to obtain these blessings. The ritual propitiation of snake deities is overwhelmingly the practice…
Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Asian Religion
Shifting Technologies of Reflection: Intergenerational Relationships and the Entanglements of Field and Home
This article focuses on the intergenerational gifts and relationships that have structured my experience of the flows between home and the field in order to highlight the deeply intersubjective and relational aspects of fieldwork. It considers the shifting technologies of reflection—the diverse forms of field-writing that I produced at different stages as intertextual mediations of my fieldworlds—present in an archive chronicling twenty-five year…
Vernacular Practice, Gendered Tensions, and Interpretive Ambivalence in Hindu Death, Deification, and Domestication Narratives
This article focuses on a Tamil Hindu woman named Aaru, who embodied the Goddess in possession performances from age thirteen, resisted marriage through her twenties, and committed suicide at twenty--nine. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Aaru and her family conducted between 2006 and 2019, it analyses narratives concerning her untimely death, subsequent deification, and eventual domestication as a pūvāṭaikkāri. It highlight…
Bringing the Dead Home: Hindu Invitation Rituals in Tamil South India
Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Tamil-speaking South India, this article presents one Hindu invitation ritual to return dead relatives known as pūvāṭaikkāri to the world of the living and install them as household deities. This two-day ceremony demonstrates that prevailing scholarly perceptions of death and what follows it in Hindu traditions have constrained our ability to appreciate other models for ritual relationshi…
Sweetening and Intensification: Currents Shaping Hindu Practices
Insistence, Persistence, and Resistance in Tamil Hindu Rituals to Call the Dead
Insistence, Persistence, and Resistance in Tamil Hindu Rituals to Call the Dead
Alcohol, Suicide, and Gendered Protest in Tamil Hindu Invitations to the Dead
Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Tamil (7 works) · Hinduism (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Art (4 works)