Biography
Anita L. Allen, also known as Anita Lafrance Allen-Castellitto, was born in Fort Worden (Port Townsend, Washington) in 1953. Her parents, Carrye Mae Allen (née Cloud) and Grover Cleveland Allen were both natives of Atlanta, Georgia. Allen's father made a career in the United States Army, serving in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Her father was a member of "Operation Kapers," a squad of enlisted men who entertained combat soldiers in Korea with song, dance and comedy. Allen spent her childhood living on military bases, including Fort Benning, Georgia and Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
Allen was one of six children. Her brother, Michael Patrick Allen, began working as an environmental lawyer for Microsoft in 2008. Other siblings are Cynthia Ann Allen Jackson and Monica Lynne Allen Newell, both of whom have worked for the federal government, Newell for the Centers for Disease Control; Grover Cleveland Allen, Jr, a professional engineer employed by the GE corporation; and Andre Ramon Allen, who made a career as a Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force and later became a paralegal.
In 1985, Allen married Paul Vincent Castellitto, a lawyer from New Rochelle, New York who specialized in white collar criminal defense law. The pair adopted two children. An earlier marriage in 1982 to artist Michael Kelly Williams of Detroit, Michigan ended in divorce. Allen was the model for William's woodcut, "Afternoon of a Georgia Faun," which began as a collage of the same name. An original version of the woodcut was printed at the acclaimed Printmaking Workshop of Robert Blackburn and now resides in the permanent print collection of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
In 2006, Allen became an elder of the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church.
Allen's experiences and perspectives have been profiled in a number of books, including Laurel Holliday’s, Children of the Dream (2000), Ellis Cose's, The Rage of a Privileged Class (1994), George Yancy's African American Philosophers: 17 Conversations (1998) and Elwood Watson: Outsiders Within (2008). She was featured in Carlin Romano's article, “A Challenge for Philosophy." Of her, he writes, "Penn’s Anita Allen is at the top of her field, but she has serious concerns about its lack of openness and diversity," Philadelphia Inquirer, October 24, 2007.
President Barack Obama appointed Allen to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues in 2010.
Read more about this topic: Anita L. Allen
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)