Books
Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora
University of California Press, 2002
“Working deftly with highly original ethnographic material, Elizabeth McAlister shows how Rara bands harness the power of Vodou spirits and the recently dead to broadcast coded points of view with historical, gendered, and transnational dimensions.”
Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas
Oxford University Press, 2004
“This collection of all new essays will explore the complex and unstable articulations of race and religion that have helped to produce ‘Black’, ‘White’, ‘Creole’, ‘Indian’, ‘Asian’, and other racialized identities and communities in the Americas.”
Music CDs
Rhythms of Rapture: Sacred Music of Haitian Vodou
“Cuts from live Vodou ceremonies are juxtaposed with performances by well-known Haitian artists, such as Boukman Experyans, RaRa Machine, Boukan Ginen and RAM. A cascade of sounds…”
Angels in the Mirror: Voodoo Music of Haiti
“Music plays a central role in Vodou practices, the basis of the concise and enthralling compilation . . . “ –Jazz Times
Scholarly Articles Published
“Religion and Migration in the Haitian Context: The Spirits, The Saints, and Jesus.” Book Chapter co-written with Karen Richman. In eds. Richard Alba and Albert J. Raboteau, Religion and Immigration in America: Comparative and Historical Perspectives. New York: NYU Press, 2008, 319-352.
Globalization and the Religious Production of Space in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 44, No. 3, September 2005.
Teaching September 11th in the Bulletin of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion, Vol 30, No. 4, November 2001.
The Rite of Baptism in Haitian Vodou In Colleen McDannell, ed., Religions of the United States in Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001: 354-363.
Love, Sex, and Gender Embodied the Spirits of Haitian Vodou in Nancy Martin and Joseph Runzo, eds., Love, Sex and Gender in the World Religions. Oxford: Oneworld Press, 2000: 129-145.
Amour, sexe et genre incarnés : les esprits du vaudou haïtien in the French journal Africultures No. 58 (Jan. 2004)
The Jew in the Haitian Imagination In Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutch, eds., Black Zion: African-American Religious Encounters with Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000: 203-227.
Madonna of 115th Street Revisited: Vodou and Haitian Catholicism in the Age of Transnationalism R. Stephen Warner, ed., Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998, 123-160.
–[This essay was reprinted in a collected volume titled African American Religious Thought: An Anthology, edited by Cornel West and Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003, 942-977.]
“New York, Lavalas, and the Emergence of Rara.” Journal of Haitian Studies, Vol. 2, Number 2 (Autumn 1996): 131-139.
The Sorcerer’s Bottle: the Visual Art of Magic in Haiti In Donald J. Cosentino (ed.) Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995: 304-321.
–[This essay was translated into French and republished as “Une bouteille de sorcier: L’Art visuel de la magie en Haiti” in Vaudou, co-edited by the Abbaye de Daoulas et les Editions Hoebeke in Brittany, France, 2003.]
Sacred Stories from the Haitian Diaspora Journal of Caribbean Studies, Vol. 9, Nos. 1 & 2 (Winter 1993): 10-27.
Magazine Articles, Essays, Conversations
New Yorker Magazine Roundtable on Haitian Music, March 2009
Afropop Worldwide interview with Elizabeth McAlister, August 2007
The Lucky Ones A mother-daughter story of love and war by Lovely Nicolas and Liza McAlister, published on Oxygen.com.
“Haitians Make Some Noise in Brooklyn,” on Rara in New York, The Beat, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Summer 1991): 28-29.
“Ton Ton Club,” on music in Haiti since Duvalier, Mirabella and New York Woman, January 1990.
“Voodoo,” New York Woman, March 1988.
