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SHERMAN, TEXAS - Art historian David Ehrenpreis will present "Joseph Wright of Derby's 'Dead Soldier': The Nation as Nuclear Family" at Austin College Thursday, April 8, at 4:30 p.m. in Hoxie Thompson Auditorium of Sherman Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public. Ehrenpreis describes his lecture as a discussion of the representation of nationalism in the years around 1800. The painter, Joseph Wright of Derby, submitted a work called "Dead Soldier" to the major art exhibition in London in 1789, and though it was an incredibly sad scene, it was tremendously popular. In place of the tremendous heroic history paintings that had been so popular in the previous generation, Wright created an image that was, at best, ambiguous about military sacrifice, Ehrenpreis explained. "This was because the understanding of patriotism had shifted in the years between, for example, Benjamin West's 'Death of General Wolfe,' and Wright's very different image, he said. "Much of this had to do with the loss of America in the War of Independence, but it also hints at a shift concerning the nature of commemoration. Instead of depicting a celebrated military hero, Wright portrays an anonymous soldier accompanied by his wife and child. This metaphor of the nation as a family is one that runs through the visual culture of this period. So Wright's painting can teach us about the shifting conception of patriotism as well as the meaning of commemoration."Ehrenpreis, assistant professor of art history at James Madison University in Virginia, specializes in 19th century art. He completed his doctoral degree at Boston University and he has held seminars on Romanticism, nationalism, and gender. He is completing "Beyond the Femme Fatale," a study of representations of women in Wilhelmine visual culture. He has published articles in the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, and the Woman's Art Journal, and reviews in CAA Reviews and Centropa. His newest project explores the intersection of gender and nationalism in European visual culture around 1800.Austin College, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), is an independent, liberal arts college of 1,300 students located 60 miles north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas. Chartered in November 1849, it is the oldest college in Texas under original charter and name as recognized by the State Historical Survey Committee.Austin College is included in Loren Pope's Colleges That Change Lives, ranked among the "Best 351 Colleges" in the 2004 Princeton Review, and profiled in the 2004 edition of Kaplan's Insiders Guide to the 328 Most Interesting Colleges.