Elizabeth A. McAlister


Elizabeth A. McAlister is a scholar of Religious Studies, and African-American studies, and feminist, gender, and sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She is known for her contributions in Afro-Caribbean religions, Haitian Vodou, Pentecostalism, race theory, transnational migration, Caribbean musicology, and evangelical spiritual warfare.

Education

After graduating from Concord Academy in 1981, McAlister earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from Vassar College, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1985. She then attended Yale University for graduate school, supported with a McNeil Fellowship in Material Culture Studies. She received a Masters of Arts in African and Afro-American studies in 1990, an M.A. in history in 1992, an M.Phil. in American studies in 1993, and a PhD in American studies in 1995.

Career

After receiving her Ph.D., McAlister worked as a post-doctoral fellow with the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers University from 1995 to 1996. In the fall of 1996, she joined the Religion Department at Wesleyan University. Since then, she has gone on to chair the university's African American Studies Department and the Religion Department. She has also served as director of the Center for African American Studies at Wesleyan. In 2008, she won the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Her research has been funded with grants from The Pew Foundation, The Lilly Foundation, The Templeton Foundation Initiative on the Study of Prayer, organized by the Social Science Research Council. She also collaborated on building a digital archive of a Vodou temple in Port-au-Prince, called Espas Milokan, through the Princeton University Crossroads project.

Research

Professor McAlister's first book and many articles focus on Afro-Caribbean religions, especially Haitian Vodou. She studied Rara festivals in Haiti, creating a website based on her research to go along with her published book. McAlister co-edited a scholarly volume arguing for the historical importance of religion in the racial formations of the Americas. She has also written a number of articles on American Christian Evangelicals, the New Apostolic Reformation and the Spiritual Warfare movement.

Publications

Books

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Interviews

Peer-reviewed articles and chapters

  • "Necroscape and Diaspora: Making Ancestors in Haitian Vodou" in Timothy Landry, Eric Montgomery and Christian Vannier, eds., Spirit Service:Vodun and Vodou in the African Atlantic World. : 283–306.
  • "Caribbean Women's Fugitive Speech Traditions" Women in French Studies Journal, Special conference issue, Dec 31, 2019: 25–35.
  • "Race, Gender, and Christian Diaspora: New Pentecostal Intersectionalities and Haiti" in Judith Casselberry and Elizabeth A. Pritchard, eds., Spirit on the Move: Black Women and Pentecostalism in Africa and the Diaspora, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019: 44–64.
  • "The Militarization of Prayer in America: White and Native American Spiritual Warfare" Journal of Religious and Political Practice. 1: 1 : 114–130.
  • "Possessing the Land for Jesus", in Paul C. Johnson, ed., Spirited Things: The Work of "Possession" in Black Atlantic Religions : 177–205.
  • "Soundscapes of Disaster and Humanitarianism: Survival Singing, Relief Telethons, and the Haiti Earthquake", Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism 39 : 22–38.
  • "From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan: The Evangelical Rewriting of Haitian History", Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 41:2 : 187–215.
  • "Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies", Anthropological Quarterly 85:2 : 457–486.
  • "Globalization and the Religious Production of Space", Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44:3 :  249–255.
  • "Love, Sex and Gender Embodied:  The Spirits of Haitian Vodou" in Nancy Martin and Joseph Runzo, eds., Love, Gender and Sexuality in the World Religions, 128–145.
  • "The Madonna of 115th Street Revisited: Vodou and Haitian Catholicism in the Age of Transnationalism" in R. Stephen Warner, ed., Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration : 123–160.
  • "A Sorcerer's Bottle:  The Visual Art of Magic in Haiti" in Donald J. Cosentino, ed., Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, 304–321
McAlister has also published numerous other articles, chapters, and interviews.

Albums

McAlister has produced three compilations of Afro-Haitian religious music: Rhythms of Rapture, Angels in the Mirror, and the CD Rara that accompanies her first book.