Sarah Cohen

Areas of Expertise: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century Art; Women in Art

Sarah R. Cohen, Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History, received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from Yale University in 1988. Her research focuses upon representations of the body in European art from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Her first book, Art, Dance and the Body in French Culture of the Ancien Régime, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2000, and she has published a number of articles on gesture and performance in early modern art. Recently, the focus of her research has shifted to the animal body, with several articles and two forthcoming books that address artistic representations of animals:  Enlightened Animals in Eighteenth-century Art:  Sensation, Matter and Knowledge (forthcoming, Bloomsbury) and Picturing Animals in Early Modern Art:  Art and Soul (under review). The courses she teaches at the University at Albany address art and architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including three courses that are open to graduate students as well as undergraduates: two courses on "Women in Art" (cross-listed with Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and a research seminar, "Art and Society in Early Modern France" (cross-listed with French Studies). Sarah Cohen also directs the Art History program and is a joint faculty member in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.