Christopher Loss

Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Higher Education

Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2007

Joined faculty in 2007

Short Biography

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.

Learn More about Christopher Loss:

Selected Publications | Awards
CV | Media Mentions

Selected Publications

Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Manuscript In-Progress).

"Reading Between Enemy Lines: Armed Services Editions and World War Two," in The Second World War, ed. Jeremy Black (7 vols., Ashgate, U.K., 2007), IV.

“’The Most Wonderful Thing Has Happened to Me in the Army’: Psychology, Citizenship, and American Higher Education in World War II,” Journal of American History, 92.3 (Dec. 2005): 864-91. Recipient of the 2006 James Madison Prize awarded by the Society for History in the Federal Government.

“Bureaucratic Tyranny: ‘The Price of Structure’ in the American University,” in Retrospective: Laurence R. Veysey’s The Emergence of the American University, organized and introduced by Christopher P. Loss, History of Education Quarterly, 45.3 (Fall 2005): 405-406, 446-53.

“Party School: Education, Political Ideology, and the Cold War,” Journal of Policy History, 16.1 (2004): 99-116.

“Religion and the Therapeutic Ethos in Twentieth-Century American History,” American Studies International, 40.3 (Oct. 2003): 61-76.

“Reading Between Enemy Lines: Armed Services Editions and World War Two,” Journal of Military History, 67.3 (July 2003): 811-34. Republished in The Second World War, ed. Jeremy Black (7 vols., Ashgate, U.K., 2007), IV.

“GI Bill of Rights, 1944” in The Home Front Encyclopedia: United States, Britain, and Canada in World Wars I and II, ed. James Ciment (3 vols., ABC-Clio, 2006), III.

“The Organizational Structure of American Universities,” co-authored with Brian Pusser, in Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd Edition, ed. James W. Guthrie (8 vols., Macmillan Reference USA, 2003), I, 384-89.

“Progressive Education,” co-authored with Catherine Gavin Loss, in Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd Edition, ed. James W. Guthrie (8 vols., Macmillan Reference USA, 2003), V, 1933-38.

“Incorporating Website Group Projects in Arts and Sciences Classes,” Teaching Concerns: A Newsletter for Faculty and Teaching Assistants at the University of Virginia (Fall 2002).

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