Name: Keith E. McNeal
Title: Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology

Email: kmcneal@ucsd.edu

Campus Address: Social Sciences Building (SSB) 294

Phone: (858) 822-2395


Education: Ph.D., Emory University, 2004


Field of Expertise:
McNeal's theoretical interests center primarily on comparative religion, the intersection of anthropology and psychoanalysis, and comparative ritual and performance studies. He has conducted previous research on drag performance as well as Pentecostalism in the southern U.S. , and he has several long-term video documentary projects in the works on religion, ritual and performance in the Caribbean.

Regions of Interest: Trinidad and Tobago, Caribbean, U.S.

Selected Publications:

"Doing the Mother's Caribbean Work: On Shakti and Society in Contemporary Trinidad." In Encountering Kali: In the Center, At the Margins, In the West , eds. R. F. McDermott and J. Kripal. Berkeley : University of California Press, pp. 223-248, 2003.


"Pantheons as Mythistorical Archives: Pantheonization and Remodeled Iconographies in two Southern Caribbean Possession Religions." In Activating the Past: Historical Memory in the Black Atlantic, eds. A. Apter and L. Derby. Cambridge : Scholars Press (in press).


"Shakti Puja (Kali Puja, Kali Ma Puja, Kali Mai Puja) Trinidad." In Encyclopedia of Caribbean Religions , eds. P. Taylor and F. I. Case. Bloomington : Indiana University Press (in press).