Tom Okie

William Thomas Okie is a historian of agriculture, environment, and the modern United States. He grew up in middle Georgia, studied history at Covenant College and the University of Georgia, and teaches courses on modern US history, historical methods, history education, and food history. He serves as associate editor of the journal Agricultural History, and his work has won prizes from the Society of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society, and the Georgia Historical Society. His first book is The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Teaching

- HIST 2112, US History since 1877

- HIST 3100/6100, Historical Methods

- HIST 7900, Technology for Historians and History Educators

- HIST 3271, Introduction to History Education

- HIST 4550/4560, Methods of History Education

- HIST 4490 / AMST 7460, Food in American History

- HIST 4163, US between the World Wars

Books

- The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South (Cambridge University Press, 2016). 

Articles

- “The Thin Ripe Line: Watermelons, Pushcarts, and the Distribution of Modern Food,” in Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food, ed. Benjamin Cohen, Michael Kideckel, and Anna Zeide (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021)

- "The Parable of the Railway Agent: Stories of Progress and Winter Legumes in the Twentieth-Century South," Rethinking History 25, no. 1, History as Creative Writing (Jan. 2021)

- “Agriculture and Rural Life in the South, 1900–1945,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, November 19, 2020

- "Southern Environmental History," in Reinterpreting Southern Histories: Essays in Historiography, ed. Craig Thompson Friend and Lorri Glover (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020), co-authored with Kathryn C. Newfont

- “Beauty and Habitation: Fredrika Bremer and the Aesthetic Imperative of Environmental History,” Environmental History 24, no. 2 (April 2019): 258–81

- “Amber Waves of Broomsedge,” Southern Cultures 25, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 58–71

- "Problem-Based Learning and the Training of Secondary Social Studies Teachers: A Case Study of Candidate Perceptions during their Field Experience," co-authored with Charles T. Wynn, Sr., International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 11, no. 2 (July 2017)

- “Under the Trees: The Georgia Peach and the Quest for Labor in the Twentieth Century,” Agricultural History 85, no. 1 (January 2011), winner of the Agricultural History Society’s 2009 Everett E. Edwards Award for Best Student Essay