The TCU Women’s Studies Program is hosting a public lecture over artistic depictions of hunting from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday in Moudy North, room 141.

Amy Freund, an art history professor, will analyze the representation of guns used in hunting and their impact on French society in the 18th century.

“I’m really excited about it,” Freund said. “It’s stuff that I’ve been working on for several years, but I’m just now coming to the point that I have interesting things to say about my research.”

Freund will talk about how the representation of hunting guns and the design of guns created a space for violence in a supposedly refined society, and defined the elite Frenchman from his inferior and against the monarchy.

“I’m focusing on the kind of hunting that involves a man going out into the field with a gun and a couple of dogs,” Freund said. “It’s the beginning of a more modern kind of hunting.”

Freund will also discuss the historical aspect of hunting in 18th and 19th century France.

“There are issues in hunting that I’m really interested in and think are still true. The idea of the association of hunting with guns and men,” Freund said. “There’s a popular image of that this is a ‘guy’s thing,’ and I’m tracing the roots of that back to this very early moment in history.”

Freund said the lecture also aims at people who don’t necessarily have a background in French history or the Enlightenment Era.

“We don’t really talk about guns in a scholarly or college context much… a lot of people have experience with guns themselves or are hunters who can tell the difference between swan and geese themselves and what I’m doing is looking at the roots of that,” Freund said.

Freund, who is in the process of writing a book over hunting in 18th and 19th century France, was awarded the opportunity to speak when she won the 2012-2013 Women’s Studies Faculty Research and Creative Activity Award.

The lecture is free and will be followed by a question and answer segment.