Jeffrey Lee Meikle (born July 2, 1949, inColumbus) is an Americancultural historian andeducator. Meikle is currently the Stiles Professor in American Studies Emeritus at theUniversity of Texas at Austin. He has generally been credited as one of the founders of the discipline ofdesign history since his bookTwentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925-1939 was published in 1979. The text lays out some of the central issues confronting the field.^[1]

Born to Wendell Alvin Meikle and Arlene Martha Craner inColumbus, Meikle initially attended theThomas Jefferson School inSt. Louis. He received both hisBachelor of Arts andMaster of Arts inAmerican Civilization fromBrown University in 1971, graduatingsumma cum laude.^[2] Meikle wrote athesis was titled "The Metaphysics of Technology: Entropy and Information as Metaphors of Society in Twentieth-Century America." He then continued on to theUniversity of Texas at Austin, where he received aDoctor of Philosophy inAmerican Studies in 1977. Meikle completed adissertation titled "Technological Visions of American Industrial Designers, 1925-1939," under the supervision ofWilliam H. Goetzmann.

While a student inAustin, Meikle was an instructor at the school until graduating. He then moved toColby–Sawyer College for one year to teach courses in American Studies. In 1979, Meikle returned toTexas and was hired as assistant professor of American Studies. He was promoted to associate professor in 1986, and then to full Professor in 1995. In 2011, the professorship was endowed as the Stiles Professor in American Studies. Eleven years later, Meikle retired from the post as Emeritus.^[3] Throughout his career, his research has focused onAmerican studies anddesign history.

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(February 2023)

• Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925-1939. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979
• American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995
• Design in the USA. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005
• Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931-1950. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015

• List of Brown University people
• List of people from Columbus, Ohio
• List of University of Texas at Austin alumni
• List of University of Texas at Austin faculty

• University of Texas at Austin profile

This biography of an American historian born in the 1940s is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• 1949 births
• Living people
• Writers from Columbus, Ohio
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American male writers
• American male non-fiction writers
• Brown University alumni
• University of Texas at Austin alumni
• Colby–Sawyer College faculty
• University of Texas at Austin faculty
• American historian, 1940s birth stubs

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from July 2025
• Pages using infobox person with multiple parents
• Articles with hCards
• Incomplete lists from February 2023
• All stub articles