U.S. History: US history, urban history, history of technology, public policy, research methods.
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.
A bicycle commuter to Mason since 2013, Schrag was awarded the Rick Holt Active Transportation Advocate Award in 2022.
Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project.
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.
HNRS 240: Reading the Past
HIST 615/635: Technology and Power
HIST 623: Recent U.S. History, 1945 to Present
HIST 797: Research Seminar
AB magna cum laude, social studies, Harvard University, 1992
PhD, history, Columbia University, 2002
Jordan Patty, Transit, Labor, and the Transition to Public Ownership in Atlanta and Oakland (2021)
Richard Hardesty, Magic in "a Tragic City": The Orioles and the Redevelopment of Baltimore, 1954-1992 (2021)
Alan S. Brody, Peculiar Capitalism: Fast-Food Franchising and Entrepreneurship in Postwar America (2020)
Roger Connor, Rooftops to Rice Paddies: Aerial Utopianism, Helicopters, and the Creation of the National Security State (2020)
Alan Capps, The Antecedents of the U.S. Border Patrol, 1812-1940 (2018)
Ray Clark, A Public Airport for the District of Columbia: The History of Washington Dulles International Airport (2017)
Mary Sullivan Linhart, Up to Date and Progressive: Winchester and Frederick County, Virginia, 1870-1980 (2014)