Heath Rojas

Heath Rojas a historian of early modern Europe and the Atlantic world, with a primary focus on France. His research examines faith and politics in the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions. More broadly, His work explores the role of affect and the sacred in modern political life.

His book project focuses on “sentimental deism,” a form of natural religion that privileged moral sentiment, alongside reason, as a means of apprehending God and cultivating virtue. He traces this tradition from early modern debates over the passions and natural theology through Rousseau and the French Revolution. In doing so, he argues that new understandings of human emotion profoundly shaped deistic belief and worship. Spanning Europe and the early United States, the project also investigates how the French Revolution’s efforts to remake religion crossed national and confessional boundaries through figures such as Thomas Paine and Joel Barlow.

Heath held fellowships at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Hagley Museum and Library, and Columbia’s Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life. Additionally, his research has been supported by Harvard’s Houghton Library, Dartmouth’s Rauner Special Collections, the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Congregational Library & Archives, and the Vermont Historical Society. His other awards include the Georges Lurcy Fellowship for Research in France, the Jerrold Seigel Fellowship in Intellectual and Cultural History, and the Laurie M. Wood Award from the Society for French Historical Studies.

Heath received his PhD in History from Columbia University in 2026 and hold AB degrees from Stanford University in History, with honors and distinction, and in French.