Zachary Schrag

Portrait of Zach Schrag
Titles and Organizations

Director of the MA Program in History
Professor

Contact Information

Email: zschrag@gmu.edu
Phone: (703) 594-1844
Office Location: Robinson Hall Room B 357A
Campus Location: Fairfax
Office Hours: Fall 2016 / M 3-5 pm

Biography

Zachary M. Schrag [silent c, rhymes with bag] studies cities, technology, and public policy in the United States in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

He is the author of four books: The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro; Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965-2009; The Princeton Guide to Historical Research; and The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation.

Schrag’s scholarly articles have been published in APT Bulletin, the Journal of Policy History, the Journal of Urban History, Research Ethics, Rethinking History, Technology and Culture, and Washington History. His essays have appeared in the American Historian, AHA Perspectives, Inside Higher Ed, the Journal of American History, Politico, Slate, Tablet Magazine, TR News, the Washington Monthly, and the Washington Post.

He has received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Gerald Ford Foundation, and the Library of Congress. His work has been awarded the Society for American City and Regional Planning History’s John Reps Prize, the Journal of Policy History's Ellis Hawley Prize, and the American Historical Association's James Harvey Robinson Prize.

Current Research

The Philadelphia riots of 1844

Selected Publications

  • The Fires of Philadelphia: Citizen-Soldiers, Nativists, and the 1844 Riots Over the Soul of a Nation. Pegasus Books, 2021.
  • The Princeton Guide to Historical Research. Princeton University Press, 2021.
  • Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965-2009. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
  • The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Dissertations Supervised

  • Mary Sullivan Linhart, Up to Date and Progressive: Winchester and Frederick County, Virginia, 1870-1980 (2014)

Courses Taught

HNRS 240: Reading the Past

HIST 615/635: Technology and Power

HIST 623: Recent U.S. History, 1945 to Present

HIST 797: Research Seminar

Education

PhD, Columbia University, 2002

AB (magna cum laude), Harvard University, 1992