Stephen Mihm
Professor | Associate Dean, Franklin College of Arts & Sciences UGA Franklin College of Arts & Sciences
- Decatur GA
Expert on the history of American business, tech, and how they shape the modern economy and society
Media
Social
Biography
During the 2017-2018 academic year, Mihm was the Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellow at the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Smithsonian Institution. More recently, he was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award. In previous years, Mihm has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, awards, and grants, including the biennial Harold F. Williamson Prize, given to a mid-career scholar for contributions to the teaching and writing of business history; a two-year, $188,000 grant from the National Science Foundation; and the History Department's Parks Heggoy Graduate Teaching Award in both 2012 and 2014. He has also received a number of major fellowships from, among other institutions, the American Council of Learned Societies; the Library Company of Philadelphia; the United States Department of Agriculture; and the Harvard Business School, where he served as the Newcomen Postdoctoral Fellowship in Business History in 2003-2004.
Mihm is presently writing a history of standards and standardization in the United States for Harvard University Press. In addition to his academic duties, Mihm is a weekly columnist for Bloomberg Opinion as well as a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Boston Globe, and many other newspapers and magazines. He also appears regularly in historical documentaries, radio and television programs, and other print and broadcast media in the United States and abroad.
Mihm lives on a historic farm outside Athens with his wife and colleague, Akela Reason, as well as their three boys, three cats, and Patch, the family dog. In his spare time, Mihm enjoys tending his orchard of heirloom apple trees, part of a larger project aimed at reviving long-lost fruit cultivars.
Areas of Expertise
Media Appearances
Stephen Mihm: Donald Trump wants to conquer Congress. Other presidents tried and failed
Pittsburg Post-Gazette online
2025-04-08
Donald Trump’s radical moves like mass deportation may pale in significance next to his use of something less showy but ultimately more far reaching: impoundment — the controversial claim that the president can “impound” funds appropriated by Congress, refusing to use them as Congress specified.
What’s fueling America's gold bar conspiracy
The Japan Times online
2025-03-31
Fort Knox, home to much of America’s gold reserves, doesn’t get many visitors. That may soon change: U.S. President Donald Trump and his sidekick, Elon Musk, claim there’s a chance someone has stolen the shiny stuff. They want to visit and see it with their own eyes.
Evangelicals see war as part of a prophecy
The Guam Daily Post online
2025-02-18
For most Americans, events in Israel elicit a familiar set of emotions: sadness at the loss of life, particularly innocent civilians; anger, even fury, at one side or another; and fear that the conflict may ultimately engulf the larger region. It’s hard to find a silver lining on the cloud that now hangs over the Middle East.
Recovering the Lost Aviators of World War II
Smithsonian Magazine online
2024-03-01
Inside the search for a plane shot down over the Pacific—and the new effort to bring its fallen heroes home
US Government Has Been Dancing Around UFOs for 75 Years | pinion
Bloomberg online
2023-02-22
A legacy of hype, hysteria and fraud is undermining legitimate inquiry into those strange objects in the sky, whether you call them spy balloons, flying saucers or unidentified aerial phenomena.
A team of UGA researchers is creating a “Noah’s Ark” of forgotten Southern apples
Atlanta Magazine online
2022-10-04
The Heritage Apple Orchard is home to 140 heirloom varieties, grown from wood cuttings snipped from trees found in niche orchards, rural backyards, and other sources across the Southeast
Event Appearances
In Defense of Presentism: History and Public Engagement
Andrew Hook Centre for American Studies University of Glasgow, Scotland
2022-11-17
Private Standards and Public Power: Paul Gough Agnew and the Corporate Capture of Standards in the United States
Adam Smith Business School University of Glasgow, Scotland
2022-11-16
The Great Convergence: Herbert Hoover, Standards, and Simplification
History Group Seminar, Copenenhagen Business School Copenhagen, Denmark
2021-11-19
Research Focus
Research Areas:
Capitalism and Economics
Cultural & Intellectual
Early America
Political & Legal
U.S. 19th & 20th Century
Research Grants
Research Grant
National Science Foundation
Two-year grant awarded via the NSF’s Social and Economic Sciences Division to underwrite research and writing of book on the history of standards and standardization. 2014
Research Fellowship
Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts, University of Georgia
University-wide competitive grant for release from teaching enabling work on book about the history of standards and standardization. 2013
Provost’s Summer Research Grant
University of Georgia
Research funds awarded via university-wide competition for archival research on a history of standards and standardization in the United States. 2012
Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship
American Council of Learned Societies
Given to advanced assistant and untenured associate professors for an academic year of research and leave from teaching responsibilities. 2009
Teaching American History Grant
U.S. Department of Education
Served as one of the lead historians in a three-year, $995,897 grant organized by project director Dr. Katherine Wright, Northeast Georgia Regional Educational Service Agency. 2009
Patents
[Content to be added]
Education
New York University
Ph.D.
History
2004
Published Works
Inching toward Modernity: Industrial Standards and the Fate of the Metric System in the United States
Business History Review2022-03-21
That the United States stands almost alone among nations in its failure to adopt the metric system has long been blamed on conservative, reactionary forces. This paper argues against this interpretation, which passes for conventional wisdom in both academic and popular circles. It instead contends that attacks on the metric system in the late nineteenth and twentieth century originated with progressive engineers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists who had taken the lead in setting the nation's first industrial standards.
Follow the Money: The Return of Finance in the Early Republic
Journal of the Early Republic2016-12-21
The recent resurgence of interest in economic and business history -- popularly known as the new “history of capitalism” -- has prompted many American historians to revisit subjects long neglected in their particular subfields. Much of this new work has focused on a particular dimension of capitalism: finance. For historians of the early American republic, the history of finance has been especially neglected. This article examines why these subjects have generally escaped attention, and offers a theoretical framework for understanding finance during this period. Finally, it offers a detailed roadmap to new avenues for research into a range of promising, if little-studied, topics.
The Peculiar Origins of American Taxation
Reviews in American History2006
"This book is not about how taxation enslaved Americans," warns Robin Einhorn in the opening lines of American Taxation, American Slavery (p. 1). It's an unusual pre-emptive strike, but a necessary one, given the ambiguity of the title of her study. Readers hoping for a libertarian screed against high taxes will come away from this book disappointed, though not necessarily unenlightened. Like Edmund Morgan's classic work on the twinned history of slavery and freedom, Einhorn is after something far more interesting: the troubling connections between property taxation, democratic political representation, and chattel slavery from the founding of the first colonies to the coming of the Civil War. Like Morgan, Einhorn has an eye for paradoxes and contradictions.
Affiliations
- Elected Member, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts (2008). Honor given “in recognition of scholarship, for support of cultural institutions, for manifest interest in bibliographical matters, or for distinction as community or national leaders in humanistic affairs.”
Accomplishments
Public Scholar Award, National Endowment for the Humanities
2018-2019
Specialty Crop Block Grant, United States Department of Agriculture
2018-2021
Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellowship, Lemelson Center for Innovation and Invention, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
2017-2018
Distinguished Lecturer, Organization of American Historians
2015-2018
Harold F. Williamson Prize, Business History Conference
Biennial award given by the BHC to a “mid-career” scholar “who has made significant contributions to the teaching and writing of business history.” 2014
Parks-Heggoy Graduate Teaching Award
Two-time winner of annual departmental award given by history graduate students in recognition of excellence in graduate instruction. (2012, 2014)
Harold F. Williamson Prize, Business History Conference
2014
“Top 10 Books of the Year”
list compiled by book review critic Michiko Kakutani, New York Times. In recognition of Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance, book co-authored with economist Nouriel Roubini. 2010
Languages
- English
