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. From 2016 to 2023 he served as associate editor of the journal Agricultural History. His work has earned support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and recognition from the Society of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society, and the Georgia Historical Society. His first book was The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and his second, Wayside: The Hidden Histories of Ordinary Plants is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press

Teaching

- HIST 2112, US History since 1877

- HIST 3100/6100/8100, Historical Methods

- 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

- "Writing History in Place: An Introduction” (with Andrew C. Baker), Agricultural History 99, no. 4 (Nov. 2025): 509–35.

- "Teaching for Surprise: Oral History, Document Interpretation, and Historical Thinking in an International Context," The History Teacher 58, no. 1 (Nov. 2024): 77–106

- "Cracks," Fides et Historia 54, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2022): 132–137.

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

- “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" (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