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 McAlister earned a bachelor's degree from Vassar College, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1985. She then attended Yale University for graduate school, receiving an M.A. in African and Afro-American studies in 1990, an M.A. in history in 1992, an M.Phil. in 1993, and a Ph.D. in 1995.

McAlister has written for "The Conversation" about Catholic views on demons and "spiritual warfare". She explained that some Catholics see abuse by priests as the work of demonic temptation, and noted the Church’s recent focus on "exorcism". She has also served as director of the Center for African American Studies at Wesleyan.

In 2023 she was named a Crossroads Research Fellow at Princeton University, where she collaborated on building a digital archive of a Vodou temple in Port-au-Prince, called Espas Mikolan.

Research McAlister's first book and many articles focus on Afro-Caribbean religions, especially Haitian Vodou. showing how Rara bands use Vodou spirits and the dead to voice coded social and political views.

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.

Interviews

"Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake" in The New York Times, January 2010. “Religious Rituals: A Wesleyan Teacher Debunks the Myths about Voodoo” in The New York Times, January 19, 2003.

Albums McAlister has 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.