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) and is an analysis of this parading musical festival as both religious and political.   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.

In her efforts to make Afro-Caribbean religions and music better understood by the American public, McAlister has been interviewed by Terri Gross on “Fresh Air,” was profiled in the New York Times, and consulted for projects such as “Africans in America” for PBS, the Learning Channel, and for Afropop Worldwide on Public Radio International.

McAlister is currently writing articles on the politics of religion in the U.S. after the Haiti earthquake, on the uses of music in Haiti and on telethons in the U.S. after the quake, on musical artist Wyclef Jean, on the recent interest in zombies in American pop culture, and a book project on the thought and interactions between American and Caribbean evangelicals who perform “spiritual warfare” (their term) in and for the nations of Haiti and the United States.

Please visit the link to your right on how you can support Haiti; besides financial contributions to international organizations, there are many ways for Americans to support relief and rebuilding by responding to requests initiated by Haitian grassroots organizations.