Sean Fraga studies the cultural history of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States, particularly the U.S. West. He is interested in the cultural, technological, social, and environmental changes that occurred during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and the ways these changes structure the world we inhabit today. Fraga’s dissertation, "A World Upon the Water: A Cultural History of the Salish Sea," traces the century-long reorientation from water to land in the American and Canadian Pacific Northwest.

 

Fraga’s academic interests include human geography, bodies of water, communications and transportation networks, race, indigeneity, and settler colonialism. Recent research topics include the Pacific Railroad Surveys, the unrealized Tehuantepec Interoceanic Ship-Railway, and Chinese-American contributions to U.S. aviation before World War I. Along with Julia Grummitt and Kimia Shahi, Fraga co-organized "Water and the Making of Place in North America," the 2016 Princeton American Studies graduate student conference.