The University of Georgia, Department of History

Tom Okie

Alumnus (Graduate Program)
B.A., Covenant College, 2002

wtokie@gmail.com

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Tom Okie's dissertation, "'Everything is Peaches Down in Georgia': Culture and Agriculture in the American South," is an environmental and cultural history of the Georgia peach, a crop that has enjoyed more cultural notoriety than economic success and so reveals much about the values of the New South generation. His research in archives and peach-growing areas has been funded in part by the University of Georgia graduate school and the Social Science Research Council, and he has presented at annual meetings of the Southern Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society, the Business History Conference, and the American Society for Environmental History. In 2010, he helped to found the Georgia Writers' Bloc, an informal collective of students and professors at UGA who meet to explore their roles as writers and authors within and beyond the discipline of history. Before coming to graduate school, he taught social studies to unruly seventh-graders in northern Honduras and northwest Georgia. He is enjoying the change of pace.

Research and Teaching Interests

[Capitalism]
[Cultural & Intellectual]
[Environment & Agriculture]
[Latin America & Caribbean]
[Transnational]
[U.S. 19th & 20th Century]

Dissertation

"Everything is Peaches Down in Georgia': Culture and Agriculture in the American South," supervised by Dr. Paul S. Sutter (2012)

Selected Publications

"Review of James H. Tuten, Lowcountry Time and Tide: The Fall of the South Carolina Rice Kingdom," South Carolina Historical Magazine (Forthcoming)

"Review of Albert G. Way, Conserving Southern Longleaf: Herbert Stoddard and the Rise of Ecological Land Management ," Florida Historical Quarterly (Forthcoming)

"Under the Trees: The Georgia Peach and the Quest for Labor in the Twentieth Century," Agricultural History (Winter 2011) Winner of the Everett E. Edwards Award More Info

Honors and Awards

Presidential Graduate Fellows Award, UGA Graduate School, Given annually to 12-14 graduate students university wide (2007-2012)

Dean's Award, UGA Graduate School, Travel grant to support research (2011)

Carl Vipperman Teaching Assistantship Award, UGA History Department (2011)

Thomas Pleasant Vincent Sr. History Scholarship, UGA History Department, Presented to a distinguished graduate student with interest in Georgia History (2011)

Everett E. Edwards Award, Agricultural History Society, Best article submitted to Agricultural History by a student (2010)

Dissertation Proposal Development Workshop in Critical Agrarian Studies, Social Science Research Council (2009)

Courses Taught

GRSC7770: Graduate Seminar [Syllabus]

HIST2112: U.S. History 1865 to Present [Syllabus]