Intro to Catherine de Medici: Why do we love to hate a woman in power?
Dr. Leah Redmond ChangHistory's leading ladies often come with a bad reputation. What can the Black Queen teach us about the misunderstood women of the past?
Learn about this Garden Talk
Catherine de Medici: a true villain, or another victim of history’s misrepresentation of female monarchs?
Since her reign in the 16th Century, Catherine de Medici’s name has been synonymous with cruelty, crazed lust for power and cold-blooded murder. And yet female monarchs have been misrepresented, misunderstood and maligned throughout history.
So, what’s the truth? Was Catherine truly the monster she has been painted to be, or a more nuanced and sympathetic figure than we have been led to believe? Join Dr. Leah Redmond Chang to find out.
Talk outline
50 minutes
Rethinking
About the Fellow
Leah researched and wrote extensively about the role of female authorship and queens during the Renaissance era. She is a former Associate Professor of French and Director of the French Literature Program at George Washington University
Thank you notes from Garden members
Rethinking Collection
It’s always good to question what we think we know. The Rethinking Collection is a series of Garden Talks by world experts that reexamine the ideas and events that have shaped and continue to shape our world.Research has proven that there's more to luck than simple chance. How can the right mindset turn uncertainty into serendipity?
The most transformative scientific breakthroughs depend on maths. Which problems are mathematicians working on that will drive scientific change in the coming decades?
Artificial intelligence systems are built to mimic human intelligence. Do they have any chance of replicating all the abilities of a brain?
The Abgar Legend tells the story of the King of Osroene, who (it's said) got into a correspondence with Jesus. Are these letters real?
With more scrutiny on it than ever, inclusion in our universities should be the widest it's ever been. So why do so many key metrics tell a different story?
Conversation is a continuous act of curating, connecting and analysing the events in our lives. How do we decide how we want to be seen?
History's leading ladies often come with a bad reputation. What can the Black Queen teach us about the misunderstood women of the past?
The Sharing Economy is challenging the West's traditional view of ownership, but other ways of thinking about property and possession have existed for millennia. What do they look like?
