Staff profile

I am a PhD candidate in Italian Studies and Art history, researching the reception of Artemisia Gentileschi in the 20th century. I also serve as the co-convenor of the 20th annual Medieval and Early Modern Student Association (MEMSA) conference. With an academic background in Modern Languages and Cultures, I have studied literature and art across the UK, Ireland, France, and Italy. My specific interest in Caravaggism was ignited during an Erasmus placement at the Università degli Studi di Catania, where I examined the intersection of literature and visual culture in the Italian Renaissance and beyond.

 

My thesis, provisionally titled 'Whose Artemisia: the Making and Remaking of a Female Artist' investigates the construction of the artist's identity through transnational dialogues. Specifically, I analyse the tension between connoisseurship and art history, Artemisia's role in the development of Seicento Neapolitan art, and her reconstruction through the dual lenses of anglophone feminism and the legacy of the Rivolta Femminile. 

• Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting
• Reception of Caravaggism and the Baroque
• Traditions of art criticism
• Early Modern studies
• Feminism

Book review

• Italian Science Fiction and the Environmental Humanities,edited by Daniel A. Finch-Race, Emiliano Guaraldo and Marco Malvestio, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2023, x + 280 pp., £65 (hardback), ISBN 9781802078701
  
  Cohen, A. S. (2025). Italian Science Fiction and the Environmental Humanities,edited by Daniel A. Finch-Race, Emiliano Guaraldo and Marco Malvestio, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2023, x + 280 pp., £65 (hardback), ISBN 9781802078701. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, 29(1), 97-99. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2025.2450872

Conference Paper

• Anti-Ocularcentric travel: the importance plausibility over visibility in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516/32) and Calvino’s Le città invisibili (1972)
  
  Cohen, A. S. (2023, August 31). Anti-Ocularcentric travel: the importance plausibility over visibility in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516/32) and Calvino’s Le città invisibili (1972) [Conference paper]. Presented at ASLE-UKI 2023 ’Transitions’, University of Liverpool.

Presentation

• Depictions of (living and) dying in the works of Artemisia Gentileschi
  
  Cohen, A. S. (2025, November 27). Depictions of (living and) dying in the works of Artemisia Gentileschi. Presented at Southwark Schools Learning Partnership, Queens College London.
• Artemisia Gentileschi with Ava Siena Cohen
  
  Cohen, A. S. (2025, October 2). Artemisia Gentileschi with Ava Siena Cohen. Presented at The HerStory Project Podcast, Online. The HerStory Project Podcast.
• The Feminist in the Frame: how Artemisia Gentileschi foregrounds the female figure as a subject
  
  Cohen, A. S. (2024, May 15). The Feminist in the Frame: how Artemisia Gentileschi foregrounds the female figure as a subject. Presented at Italian Symposium 2024, North London Collegiate School.