Pheolyn Allen

Professional Bio

Pheolyn Allen is dual-titled PhD student in English Literature and African American and Diaspora Studies at Penn State. He holds a BA in Media Arts from the University of North Texas, where he served as an instructor for the UNT Youth Media Lab, educating marginalized communities and foster youth in media pedagogy and filmmaking techniques. Currently, he works with Penn State’s Center for Black Digital Research, serving as a creative producer and director for their various media and broadcasting projects, such as their annual Douglass Day Transcribe-A-Thon.

In summer 2023, he worked as a Junior Fellow with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting at the Library of Congress. During his tenure, Pheolyn curated the public-facing, digital exhibit The Odyssey of Black Studies in Public Broadcasting which examines the rich history of the Black Studies movement, from its inception with the student strikes of 1968 that led to the founding of the first ethnic studies program at San Francisco State University in 1969, to Black Studies celebrating its fifty-year anniversary in 2019.

Pheolyn's research areas include Afrofuturism, Black queer literature, Black LGBTQ+ visual and performance studies, Black feminist literature and criticism, and literary works of the New Negro Movement.