Yael Even studies Florentine art and society in the 15th and 16th centuries.  Her current interests are visual literacy in renaissance Florence and public art especially mythologized pageants and their role in familiarizing so-called ordinary citizens with Greco-Roman culture.   

Professor Even received her B.A. degree in art history and English and American literature from the Hebrew University; her M.A. degree in art history from the Universite de Paris X; and her Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University. As a doctoral candidate, she has taught classes such as Introduction to Western Art at Columbia University. The courses that she has been teaching in the Art and Art History Department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis are Renaissance Art and Architecture; Topics in Renaissance; Baroque Art and Architecture; the Artist and the City; The Nude; and the Sophomore/Junior Seminar.

Professor Even is currently co-editing a special issue (Exploration in Renaissance Culture) with Professor Liana Cheney. She is a member of the editorial board of Women Arts Quarterly. In 2011, Professor Even presented two papers in two respective conferences on the prevalence of ephemeral images of Bacchus for Pope Leo X’s formal entry to Florence. Her latest essays include “The Assault on Hercules’s Bride South and North of the Alps” in Women and the Arts; “The Public’s Familiarization with Images of Heroic Rapes in Medicean Florence” in the International Journal of Art and Society; and “Nessus’s Abduction of Deianira: A Subject for All Season” in Explorations in Renaissance Culture.