Barbara Allen

Education & Professional History

Indiana University, BA, MA, PhD

Highlights & Recent Activity

• Directed the film Actual World, Possible Future, which was named the 2020 Bronze Medal Award Winner by the National Telly Awards in the Social Responsibility Category—which included over 1,2000 entrants from all 50 US states and five continents.
• Co-Authored the book, Truth in Advertising? Lies in Political Advertising and How They Affect the Electorate with Daniel Stevens, which was named the winner of the Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize 2019, Best Book in American Politics.
• Feature in the Carleton College Voice on the award-winning book that examines how campaign advertising affects civil discourse.
• The Quest for the Perfect Timpani — Along with Rebecca Kite, Allen worked to design, patent and manufacture a GP Percussion timpani, curated by the International Percussive Arts Society Museum: Rhythm! Discovery Center, Indianapolis, IN.

Barbara Allen is a political scientist and filmmaker. Her research in political communication includes analyzing election news coverage and political advertising, subjects on which she has published many articles and an award-winning book, Truth in Advertising? Lies in Political Advertising and How They Affect the Electorate, co-authored with Daniel Stevens. With Stevens and dozens of Carleton students she has been analyzing local and national news coverage of US Elections since Election 2000. The Carleton Election Study has been the basis of student research presentations at such professional conferences as the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting and a subject of numerous senior thesis projects.

Professor Allen also writes in the field of political theory, publishing many journal articles and books on the democratic theory of Alexis de Tocqueville and the political thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. She teaches courses on Tocqueville and King as well as on many other thinkers and activists working for social justice in late-twentieth century and current US politics.

Professor Allen earned her Ph.D. from Indiana University working with NOBEL Laureate Elinor Ostrom and political theorist Vincent Ostrom. She is a Senior Research Fellow of the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis where she has co-authored and edited books with Vincent Ostrom including the two-volume work, The Quest to Understand Human Affairs: Vol 1, Natural Resources Policy and Essays on Community and Collective Choice and Vol 2, Essays on Collective, Constitutional, and Epistemic Choice. This research is also the subject of her courses on Institutional Analysis and Development and Social Ecological Systems, which she teaches in the Environmental Studies, Public Policy, and Political Science programs.

Professor Allen teaches in Cinema and Media Studies as well as in Political Science, using tools from both fields to think about and analyze many important puzzles that face human communities. Her work as a director of nonfiction films examines urgent political, economic, and social issues. Signing On: Stories of Deaf Breast Cancer Survivors, Their Families and the Deaf Community won the Twin Cities Film Fest Audience Award in 2011, screened in Berlin at Gebärdensprachfilmwoche 2013, and aired on PBS Television. Signing On uncovered the disparities in healthcare access for Deaf people and troubling facts about US health literacy in general and for all non-majority language communities.

In 2019, Allen premiered Actual World Possible Future: The Lives and Work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. The film documents Noble Laureate (Economics) Lin Ostrom’s research showing how ordinary people can tackle global challenges like climate change. A TV version of Actual World Possible Future was broadcast by Indiana Public Television, winning a bronze medal in the 2020 Telly Awards, Social Responsibility Division.

Professor Allen’s filmmaking also reflects her interest in design, particularly mechanical design. With timpanist and marimba soloist Rebecca Kite, she also holds four US and international patents for design of timpani.

Film Works

• Ostroms the Movie
  • Actual World, Possible Future
  • Elinor and Vincent Ostrom — International Studies of Choice, Cooperation, Governance
  • The Lakewood Project and the Ostrom Workshop
  • Art and Artisanship in Governance: Elinor Ostrom and Vincent Ostrom and the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis
  • The Artisanship and Science of Institutional Design
• Signing On: Stories of Deaf Breast Cancer Survivors, Their Families and the Deaf Community for Public Television
• Timpani Manufacturers Barbara Allen and Rebecca Kite Discuss their Patented Redesigns of GP Percussion Timpani

Published Works

Books

Truth in Advertising? Verbal, Visual, and Oral Lies in Political Advertising and How They Affect the Electorate. Lexington Books, 2018 (with Daniel Stevens). Winner 2019 Richard E. Neustadt Book Prize awarded by the American Politics Group of the British Political Studies Association for the best book in American Politics.

Tocqueville, Covenant, and the Democratic Revolution: Harmonizing Earth with Heaven. 2005. Lanham, MD: Lexington books.

The Quest to Understand Human Affairs: Essays on Collective, Constitutional, and Epistemic Choice by Vincent Ostrom. 2012. Edited, Annotated and Introduced by Barbara Allen. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

The Practice of Constitutional Development. 2009. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (edited volume with Filippo Sabetti and Mark Sproul-Jones).

The Struggle to Constitute and Sustain Productive Orders. 2008. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (edited volume with Filippo Sabetti and Mark Sproul-Jones).

Articles

Political Theory

• Choosing a President: The Electoral College and Beyond
• An Undertow of Race Prejudice in the Current of Democratic Transformation: Tocqueville on the “Three Races” of North America
• The Media and the Gulf War: Framing, Priming, and the Spiral of Silence
• Martin Luther King’s Civil Disobedience and the American Covenant Tradition
• Tocqueville’s Analysis of Belief in a Transcendent Order, Enlightened Interest and Democracy

Political Communications

• Fair’s Fair? Principles, Partisanship, and Perceptions of the Fairness of Campaign Rhetoric
• Partisanship and Perceptions of Fairness: Ignoring the Facts
• The Media and the Gulf War: Framing, Priming, and the Spiral of Silence
• What is Negative about Negative Advertisements?
• Local News and Perceptions of the Rhetoric of Political Advertising
• Racism, Sexism, and Candidate Evaluations in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
• When Going to War Is Costly: A Comparative Study of Audiences and the Partisan Press
• Local News Coverage in a Social Capital Capital: Election 2000 on Minnesota’s Local News Stations
• What’s Good for the Goose is Bad for the Gander: Negative Political Advertising, Partisanship, and Turnout

Deaf Studies

• Assessing the End-of-Life-Care Educational Needs of Elderly Deaf Persons: Lessons on Language and Culture for Researchers and Health Practitioners
• American Sign Language and End-of-Life Care: Research in the Deaf Community
• Using American Sign Language in Assessing the End-of-Life-Care Educational Needs of Deaf Persons: Lessons on Language, Culture, and Research Practices