Dr. Judith P. Zinsser will be giving a lecture entitled "The Betrayal: Elisabeth Badinter and the Marquise Du Chatelet."

The philosophe, Emilie Du Chatelet has not been treated well by her biographers. Most recently, the French intellectual, Elisabeth Badinter, though supporting public events in commemoration of Du Chatelet's three-hundredth birthday, continues to denigrate the marquise's achievements and to focus instead on an unflattering, distorted psychological profile. What could be her motives?

Dr. Judith P. Zinsser, the feminist historian, wrote the first comprehensive biography of Du Chatelet, published in 2006 and was the co-translator of a selection of Du Chatelet's writings for the series "The Other Voice of Early Modern Europe."