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Sean Fraga

Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Environmental Studies and History
Sean Fraga
Pronouns He / Him / His Email sfraga@usc.edu

Biography

Sean Fraga is an assistant professor (teaching) of Environmental Studies and History. Fraga is an environmental historian of the North American West and eastern Pacific Ocean during the long nineteenth century. He specializes in connections between U.S. imperial expansion, Native sovereignty, technology, and the environment. Fraga’s digital humanities research focuses on digital mapping and on scholarly uses of augmented reality. 

 

Fraga’s book project, Ocean Fever: Steam Power, Transpacific Trade, and American Colonization of Puget Sound, is under contract with Yale University Press for publication in the Lamar Series in Western History....

Education

  • Ph.D. History, Princeton University, 1/2019
  • M.A. History, Princeton University, 5/2015
  • BA American Studies (intensive), with distinction, Yale University, 5/2010
    • (Spring 2024) ENST 499. Special Topics – Waves of Change: Unearthing Coastal Environmental Histories, TBA – TBA, OFFICE
    • (Spring 2024) GESM 130. Seminar in Social Analysis – Pacific Beaches in the American Imagination, TTh, 03:30pm – 04:50pm
    • (Fall 2024) ENST 344. Environmental Ethics, TTh, 02:00pm – 03:20pm, WPH207
    • (Fall 2024) ENST 495. Senior Seminar in Environmental Studies, F, 08:00am – 05:50pm
    • (Fall 2024) ENST 499. Special Topics – Infrastructure and Environmental Justice in United States History, T, 11:00am – 12:20pm

  • Journal Article

    • Fraga, S. P. (2022). “Steam Power, Native Labor, and Contested Terraqueous Mobilities during American Settlement of Puget Sound, 1846–1873”. Mobilities. Vol. 17 (2), pp. 196–212. article link
    • Fraga, S. P. (2020). “‘An Outlet to the Western Sea’: Puget Sound, Terraqueous Mobility, and Northern Pacific Railroad’s Pursuit of Trade with Asia, 1864–1892”. Western Historical Quarterly. Vol. 51 (4), pp. 439–451. (article link)
    • Fraga, S. P. (2020). “Digitally Mapping Commercial Currents: Maritime Mobility, Vessel Technology, and U.S. Colonization of Puget Sound, 1851–1861,”. Current Research in Digital History. Vol. 3 (article link)
    • Fraga, S. P. (2014). “Native Americans, Military Science, and Settler Colonialism on the Pacific Railroad Surveys, 1853–1855”. Princeton University Library Chronicle. Vol. 75 (3), pp. 317–349. (article link)
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