Welcome
I am a historian of the twentieth-century United States and an assistant professor of history at George Mason University. I study the interactions between Americans and their physical surroundings: cities, landscapes, and technology. I am also interested in research ethics.
I am at work on two books, tentatively entitled The Militia and the Mob: The National Guard in Urban Riots, 1831 to the Present, and Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965 to the Present.
News
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April 23, 2008.
The Journal of Policy History has accepted my article, “How Talking Became Human Subjects Research: The Federal Regulation of the Social Sciences, 1965-1991,” drawn from my book-in-progress on the history of IRB review of the social sciences and humanities. The article is tentatively scheduled to be published in spring 2009, but in the meantime you can read a draft at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1124284. I welcome feedback.
April 11, 2008.
I’ve been awarded a 2008-2009 Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress to work on my book on the history of American riot control.
March 22, 2008.
Ariel Schrag, Awkward and Definition. A reissue of two of my cousin’s autobiographical graphic novels about her high school years. Thank heaven, I appear in neither.
David Ngaruri Kenney and Philip G. Schrag, Asylum Denied: A Refugee’s Struggle for Safety in America. My father’s latest. I contributed two words: the title.
March 20, 2008.
As of March 1, I have joined the editorial board of the Journal of Urban History.
March 4, 2008.
My former colleague Robert Hawkes, who retired from George Mason University in 2006, died this morning in Blackstone, Virginia. Bob was a gifted and popular teacher, who let me sit in the back of his classroom, then explained the tricks he had used. I will think of him whenever I try to make a course a little better.
February 8, 2008.
On January 30 I lectured on Metro as part of Virginia Tech’s New Metropolis Lecture Series. The website includes a podcast of my talk and some of the accompanying images.
January 23, 2008.
Bob Post reviews The Great Society Subway in the September 2007 issue of the Journal of Transport History:
This is a remarkable book. It has drama, it has pathos, it has passion, it has literary grace. Most of all, Zachary Schrag’s analysis of the intersections of technology, culture, politics, and ideology in the history of Washington DC’s rapid transit system has the tone of authenticity and the tempo of an accomplished storyteller.
The issue also features my review of Jonathan Richmond, Transport of Delight: the Mythical Conception of Rail Transit in Los Angeles.