Leadership, Policy, and Organizations
205D Payne Hall
414 GPC
230 Appleton Place
Nashville, Tennessee 37203-5721
615-343-4038
615-343-7094
Christopher Loss holds doctorates in higher education and in history from the University of Virginia. Prior to joining the faculty at Vanderbilt University, Loss was a research fellow in the Governance Studies Program at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
Professor Loss specializes in twentieth-century American history with an emphasis on the social, political, and policy history of American higher education. His research has been supported by the Franklin Roosevelt Library Institute, the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library Institute, and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he was a fellow in contemporary history and public policy in 2004-05. His publications include peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of American History, the Journal of Policy History, and the History of Education Quarterly, among others. In 2006, he won the James Madison Prize, awarded annually to an outstanding article on the history of the federal government by the Society for History in the Federal Government. Most recently, in 2007, he was a recipient of the Award for Excellence in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Virginia.
Currently, Professor Loss is revising his dissertation for publication. “From Democracy to Diversity: The Politics of American Higher Education in the Twentieth Century” (University of Virginia, 2007) examines the role of higher education in state building and in redefining conceptions of democratic citizenship in the twentieth century.