معرفی
Heather McCrea serves as Associate Professor in the Department of History at Kansas State University's College of Arts and Sciences, maintaining an office in 002D Calvin Hall. Her scholarly focus centers on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean through the lenses of medical, environmental, and indigenous history.
Dr. McCrea's research interrogates the intersection of public health, state formation, and environmental determinism in Latin America's tropics. Her current book project Gulf of Disease: Public Health in Latin America and the Invention of Trans-Caribbean Identity analyzes disease control campaigns across tropical ports including New Orleans, Veracruz, Progreso, Havana, Panama City, and Caracas, revealing how tropical medicine shaped regional identities during state-building processes.
Her publication record demonstrates consistent thematic trajectories across temporal and geographic scopes, with recurring investigations of Yucatán's public health history (1833-1924), colonial New Spain's cultural encounters, and religious practices in nineteenth-century Mexico. These works collectively bridge medical anthropology, environmental studies, and indigenous epistemologies while highlighting disease as both historical catalyst and analytical framework for understanding Latin American state formation.
