Sarah Payne, PhD.

Associate Professor

History

Associate Director of Research

Public Lands History Center


Fields of Expertise

Education and Outreach, History, Policy

Areas of Interest

Cultural resource management/historic preservation, Public history, History of women, gender, & sexuality, Environmental history, Public lands history


Biography

Sarah Payne joined the faculty at CSU in fall 2012 when she was hired as one of the department’s three Public Historians. Prior to her time at CSU, she worked in a wide range of Public History positions including at a consulting firm specializing in historic preservation and cultural resource management, as the managing editor of the New Mexico Historical Review, and as a consultant for museum and outreach projects. In addition to teaching and continuing to practice Public History, her research is in the field of Environmental History. Payne’s current manuscript project Screwing with Nature: An Environmental History of Birth Control in the United States explores the production consumption and disposal histories of contraceptives from the late nineteenth-century to 2010. In addition to teaching in the history department, she serves as Associate Director of Research for CSU’s Public Lands History Center (PLHC). At the PLHC Payne and her colleagues work to promote justice and democracy by revealing, telling, and disseminating complex histories of public lands in partnership with public lands agencies, communities, students, and the public.