Amy Freund
Amy Freund is an associate professor and the Kleinheinz Family Endowed Chair in Art History at 51³Ô¹ÏÍøMethodist University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and began her teaching career in the 51³Ô¹ÏÍøart history department in 2005 as a Haakon Predoctoral Fellow. She subsequently held an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. Before joining the 51³Ô¹ÏÍøfaculty in 2014, she was an assistant professor at Texas Christian University.
Freund is a specialist in 18th-century European art. Her first book, (Penn State University Press, 2014), examines the ways in which sitters and artists used portraiture to reformulate personal and political identity during the French Revolution. Articles related to this project have been published in Eighteenth-Century Studies, and in Interior Portraiture and Masculine Identity in France, 1789–1914 (Ashgate, 2010). Her second book, Noble Beasts: Hunters and Hunted in Eighteenth-Century French Art (Yale University Press, 2026) analyzes the representation of the hunt in late 17th- and 18th-century France. Research from this project has been published in Art History, Journal18, and several edited volumes. Freund is also second vice-president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) and past president of Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA): .
Education
Ph.D. and M.A., History of Art, University of California, Berkeley
A.B., Art History, summa cum laude, Princeton University
Recent Work
Research
European art of the long 18th century; politics and visual culture; portraiture and the history of selfhood; the visual representation of animals; gender and representation; the history and decoration of mechanical objects, especially guns.
Books
Yale University Press, 2026.
. Penn State University Press, 2014.
Articles
co-authored with Michael Yonan, in Animal Modernities: Images, Objects, Histories, eds. Katie Hornstein and Daniell Harkett, University of Leuven Press (2025)
in Thinking Women and Art in the Long Eighteenth Century: Strategic Reinterpretations, eds. Melissa Hyde, Jennifer Germann, and Mechthild Fend, Amsterdam University Press, 2025.
co-authored with Tom Stammers, French History 38.1 (2024)
Guest editor, “,” special issue of Journal18 (9, Spring 2020)
“ co-authored with Michael Yonan, Journal18 #7 (Spring 2019).
“Sexy Beasts: The Politics of Hunting Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century France,” Art History 42.1 (February 2019) 40-67.
“Good Dog! Jean-Baptiste Oudry and the Politics of Animal Painting,” in ed. Heather MacDonald, 66-79. Lucia/Marquand, distributed by Yale University Press, 2016.
“Men and Hunting Guns in Eighteenth-Century France,” in , eds. Jennifer Germann and Heidi Strobel. Ashgate, 2016.
The Art Bulletin 93.3 (September 2011): 325-344.
In Interior Portraiture and Masculine Identity in France, 1780-1914, edited by Temma Balducci, Heather Jensen, and Pamela Warner, 15-29. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011.
“The Legislative Body: Print Portraits of the National Assembly, 1789-1791.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 41.3 (Spring 2008): 337-358.
Distinctions
Clark Fellow, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, Spring 2021
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Fall 2017.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title, American Library Association, for Portraiture and Politics in Revolutionary France, 2015.
Godbey Book Award for Portraiture and Politics in Revolutionary France, Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute, SMU, 2015.
John H. Daniels Research Fellowship, National Sporting Library, Middleburg, Va., 2008.
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2006-08.
Haakon Predoctoral Fellowship in Art History, Division of Art History at 51³Ô¹ÏÍøMethodist University, Dallas, TX, 2004-06.
Course list
| Early modern European art | |
| The global 18th century | |
| Portraiture | |
| Animals in art | |
| France 1500-1914 | |
| The decorative arts and the history of dress | |
| The visual arts and the French Revolution |
