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WOMEN’S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES
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Sasha Coles

Sasha Coles

Assistant Teaching Professor of History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Pond Lab 114
sfc5843@psu.edu
Coles Headshot_2024

Professional Bio

I am a historian of the nineteenth-century United States with an interest in women and gender, labor and capital, and religious belief and practice. I received my PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and worked at the University of Utah before joining Penn State in August 2021.

My first book, tentatively titled Home Industry: A History of Utah’s Silk Experiment and Mormon Women’s Authority, focuses on the women workers who attempted to establish a self-sufficient silk industry in western Latter-day Saint (or Mormon) settlements. By most measurements, they failed. Even so, my work sheds light on how and why this “home industry” endured for over 50 years.

I am a passionate researcher. I am also a public history practitioner. From 2017 to 2025, for example, I built and managed the Enchanted Archives, a digital public history platform that uncovered the historical roots of Disney park food, aesthetics, and attractions. The 24 essays and two walking tours on the platform offered a new layer of storytelling to the Disney park experience.