Elizabeth McAlister is Associate Professor of Religion, and also teaches in American Studies and African American Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in 1995 from Yale in American Studies with expertise in Afro-Caribbean religions. Her first book is Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora (University of California Press, 2002). Her second book is a volume co-edited with Henry Goldschmidt that theorizes race and religion as linked constructs: Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas (Oxford University Press, 2004). McAlister has published Rara, numerous articles and book chapters and produced three compilations of Afro-Haitian religious music: Rhythms of Rapture (Smithsonian Folkways, 1995), Angels in the Mirror, and the CD Rara that accompanies her first book. McAlister is currently writing on musical artist Wyclef Jean, on Zombies in American culture, and on the interactions between American evangelicals in the Spiritual Mapping movement and the nation of Haiti. Professor McAlister curates a learning website on Haitian rara festivals at http://rara.wesleyan.edu/ For further information her faculty website is http://emcalister.faculty.wesleyan.edu/
Popular Press
The Bad Boy Makes Good, Foreign Policy (2011)
What Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly, Haiti's pop star turned president, learned from a lifetime in...
Online Scholarly Venues
Haiti and the Unseen World, Social Science Research Council (2010)
The religious imagery of Vodou points to the covert and often illegal world of deal...
Poster Child (with Lovely Nicolas) (2010)
Lovely Nicolas reflects on being chosen as a Unicef poster girl in a campaign to...
Radio
A Crisis of Faith and Meaning: Understanding the Haiti Earthquake, Interfaith Voices (2010)
This radio segment explores how the three largest religious groups in Haiti, Catholics, Pentecostals, and...
Music and the Story of Haiti, Afropop Worldwide (2007)
This 6-minute Afropop Worldwide radio essay explores how music formed history and identity in Haiti,...
Chapters in Edited Volumes
Listening for Geographies: Music as Sonic Compass Pointing Towards African and Christian Diasporic Horizons in the Caribbean, Geographies of the Haitian Diaspora (2011)
Haitian religious music reveals that even groups with self-consciously diasporic identities premised on a national...