Chance Meetings - Rachel Cohen: A Conclusion

The final lecture of the seminar will extend the lines of chance meetings forward, watching new art forms emerge after the first World War, and considering Carl Van Vechten’s photographs of the leading lights of modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gertrude Stein.

In the turbulent 1960s, we will see Marianne Moore’s friendship with Elizabeth Bishop, and the effect of the Civil Rights era on James Baldwin’s encounters with Beauford Delaney, Richard Avedon, and Norman Mailer. From this concluding vantage, participants will be able to look back at a rich tapestry from this first season of chance meetings.

Students are encouraged to read the featured text in advance of the session, in this instance select chapters from Cohen's own A Chance Meeting.

A Q&A will follow the presentation, and a recording will be made available for those who cannot attend live.

The Authors Guild Foundation is excited to present Chance Meetings, a new online literary seminar inspired by Rachel Cohen’s A Chance Meeting, a dazzling group biography that offers a striking vision of the making and remaking of the American mind and imagination from the Civil War to the Vietnam War.

Following the book’s spirit and shape, the monthly sessions feature talks on beloved and thought-provoking classics of American literature by contemporary writers with a personal connection to the works they are discussing. Cohen herself will lead two talks and circulate an e-newsletter to students in the weeks between sessions.

To register for other sessions, visit the Authors Guild Foundation / Chance Meetings collection.

Host or Publisher Authors Guild Foundation