Elizabeth A. McAlister

Not to be confused with Elizabeth McAlister.

Elizabeth A. McAlister is an American scholar of religion, 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, and evangelical spiritual warfare.

Elizabeth A. McAlister
Born	1963
Education	Vassar College, B.A. 1985 Yale University, M.A. 1990 & 1992, M.Phil. 1993, PhD 1995
Employer	Wesleyan University

Education

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, where she received Masters of Arts (M.A.) 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 began working as a visiting professor of religion at Wesleyan University before being hired as a full professor in 1997. 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.

Research

Professor McAlister's work focuses on Afro-Caribbean religions, especially Haitian Vodou. She has also written a number of articles on American Christian Evangelicals and the Spiritual Warfare movement. She has produced three albums of Afro-Haitian music.

Publications

Books

• McAlister, Elizabeth A. (2002). Rara! : Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora. Berkeley, CA: University of California Pres. doi:10.1525/9780520926745. ISBN 978-0-520-92674-5.
• McAlister, Elizabeth; Goldschmidt, Henry (2004). Goldschmidt, Henry; McAlister, Elizabeth (eds.). Race, Nation and Religion in the Americas. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195149181.001.0001. ISBN 0-19-514918-1.

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. (Indiana University Press, 2022): 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 (2016): 114–130.
• "Possessing the Land for Jesus", in Paul C. Johnson, ed., Spirited Things: The Work of "Possession" in Black Atlantic Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014): 177–205.
• "Soundscapes of Disaster and Humanitarianism: Survival Singing, Relief Telethons, and the Haiti Earthquake", Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism 39 (Nov 2012): 22–38.
• "From Slave Revolt to a Blood Pact with Satan: The Evangelical Rewriting of Haitian History", Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 41:2 (June 2012): 187-215.
• "Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies", Anthropological Quarterly 85:2 (Spring 2012): 457–486.
• "Globalization and the Religious Production of Space", Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44:3 (Sept 2005):  249–255.

McAlister has also published numerous other articles, chapters, and interviews.