A guest lecture by Sylvia Topp, part of The Secret Chord Project: Exploring the Religious in Popular Music Through the Works of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.

Sylvia Topp is the author of Eileen: The Making of George Orwell (Unbound, 2024). She has worked in publishing since college, starting as a copy editor on medical journals, then moving to editing at major literary publishing houses. She was the long-time wife and partner of Tuli Kupferberg, a Beat poet who later was a co-founder, in 1964, of the Fugs, a legendary rock and roll band. Topp and her husband Tuli were acquainted with Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village in the 1960s and '70s.

The Secret Chord Project explores the influence of religious concepts and imagery in popular music, with a particular focus on Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, two of the most influential singer-songwriters of our time. This project brings together leading scholars specializing in Dylan and Cohen, individuals who had personal connections to them, musicians, songwriters, as well as the Director of the internationally recognized Institute for Bob Dylan Studies at the University of Tulsa. These events offer rare opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students across campus communities—as well as Rochester’s broader community—to engage with them and their scholarship.

Sponsored by the Department of Religion & Classics, the Center for Jewish Studies, the Humanities Center, the Arthur Satz Department of Music, the Departmetn of English, the Institute for Popular Music, and the Eastman School of Music.