Deidre McCloskey, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will discuss her new book during a presentation Feb. 18 at Ball State University.

McCloskey will give the 2005 Emens Professorship Lecture, sponsored by the Miller College of Business, at 3 p.m. in the L.A. Pittenger Center Ballroom. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will focus on her 600-page book, "The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce."

She has been the Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 2000, and also holds the title of Tinbergen Professor of Economics, Philosophy, and Art and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University of Rotterdam. 

Trained at Harvard as an economist, McCloskey has written or edited 20 books and about 200 articles on economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, feminism, ethics and law. She also has taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa and Stanford University.