Charles Heath II, Ph.D.

Biography

Charles Heath received a Ph.D. in History from Tulane University in 2007, and joined the Department of History at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. He holds the rank of Associate Professor and teaches Latin American history, the history of Mexico, and the US survey. In August 2015, the University of Nebraska Press published Heath’s first historical monograph, The Inevitable Bandstand: The State Band of Oaxaca and the Politics of Sound. The work examines the intersection of culture and politics in the diverse and fragmented state of Oaxaca, Mexico, the state band’s 150-year history, and its role as a unifying, educating, and ludic organization.

Heath’s current research reveals the surprising (and relatively unknown) transnational histories of Mexican military bands and their performances throughout the US from 1884-1930. The research uncovers a spiritual sense of community between the sister republics of Mexico and the US, and the propagation of a specific and purposeful political culture on the part of the Mexican government, while paying particular attention to the reactions of the press and audiences in the US.

Heath has published academic works in the U.S. and has presented at academic conferences in the U.S. and Mexico. He is a member of the Rocky Mountain Conference, the Southeastern Conference of Latin American Studies, the Forum of European Expansion and Global Interaction, and the American Musicology Society. In 2013 and 2014, Heath received the Engaged Scholar Award for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences for his outreach to the Latino community in southeast Texas, and is a two-time Fellow of the NEH Summer Institutes, in 2011 in Mexico, and in 2014 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the Fall 2016 semester Heath served as Copenhaver Scholar-in-Residence at Roanoke College, Salem, VA.

Heath leads the department’s Study Abroad: History in Mexico, now in its third year. The program covers 2,500 km (almost one-third of the nation’s territory in a little over three weeks). Courses taught to over thirty program alumni include History of Mesoamerican Civilizations, and Public History: Past and Present in Mexico. The program has generated almost one hundred student research projects consisting of 50,000 words, and nearly 1,000 geo-located images, all of which may be seen at historicalmx.org