Public Programs & Events

In the early 1940s, Rose Standish Nichols (1872-1960) was introduced to Harvard student Garner Ranney (1919-2001). Meeting again by chance in 1947, they began a correspondence that lasted for the rest of Rose’s life, generating some 3,300 letters, which are now in the collection of the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard.

Rose and Garner’s correspondence offers a fascinating window into Rose’s later years, as well as into life in the United States as the Cold War was becoming a reality. Garner, a US State Department employee, shared extensive news of his life in D.C., delving into the diplomatic issues the United States was confronting– topics the politically-engaged Rose relished. The letters also suggest how much of a kindred spirit Rose found in Garner as they conversed about their common friends, art, music, and architecture.

Join us for a virtual talk with scholar Anne-Laure François who will discuss her on-going research into Rose and Garner’s letters, a with focus on the first three years of their correspondence. Anne-Laure François is an associate professor at Université Paris Nanterre in suburban Paris, where she teaches about American politics and American constitutional law.