Sarah Louise Cowan's research focuses on modern and contemporary art of the Americas, with a particular focus on the intersection of visual art and activism. Her current book project examines how contemporary art engenders forms of mourning foreclosed by public memorials. It looks specifically at artworks commemorating people whose lives were touched by state-condoned violence.

Cowan's first book, Howardena Pindell: Reclaiming Abstraction (Yale University Press, November 2022), is the first book-length scholarly publication about any aspects of the multifaceted career of artist, activist, curator and writer Howardena Pindell (b. 1943). The book develops the concept of Black feminist modernisms. It interrogates the history and reception of abstraction in the U.S., particularly how Black artists since 1960 have reclaimed abstract art by rerouting its dominant associations with Euro-American modernisms. The book received a 2021 Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant.

Media Publications:

• "On the Dance Floor: Copresence and the Problem of Artistic Influence," in Tales of Brave Ulysses: Al Loving, Howardena Pindell, Alan Shields, Richard Van Buren (Garth Greenan Gallery, 2023)
• "The Past and Future of Art History Is Black Feminist Art History," Yale University Press blog, Nov. 29, 2022

Scholarly Publications: 

• Howardena Pindell: Reclaiming Abstraction (Yale University Press, 2022)
• "To Touch Time: U.S. Black Feminist Modernist Sculpture in the 1970s and 1980s," Arts (February 2024)
• "Texturing Abstraction: Howardena Pindell's Cut and Sewn Paintings," Art Journal (Winter 2020)