Elizabeth McAlister is Associate Professor of Religion, and also teaches in American Studies and African American Studies at Wesleyan University. 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.

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