Home is Elsewhere
Yi-Fu Tuan
Wednesday, March 9 / 4:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
Abstract:
Plants are truly in place. Animals less so. Humans least of all. That’s the sum of my
story. I will elaborate on it in two parts. The first part identifies the conditions that make
home, real home, so important to our sense of wellbeing. Leaving home can make us
homesick to the extent of incapacitating us. We are prone to be sentimental about home.
Even in America, a famously mobile society, the sentiment is popularized in such poems
and songs as “Home Sweet Home.” On the other hand, human imagination is always
capable of taking us elsewhere to realms of beauty and fruitfulness that no comforts of
home can satisfy. So we migrate to greener pastures. But even when we are forced out of
home and homeland, even when we are exiled, there are unexpected spiritual/intellectual
rewards. Religion itself, whether it be Buddhism or Christianity, considers attachment to
home and all that it ideally offers not a blessing but a condition fatal to one’s true destiny.
Yi-Fu Tuan is a Chinese-U.S. geographer who was born in 1930 in Tientsin, China. He
attended University College, London, and graduated with a B.A. and M.A. in 1945 and
1948 respectively. From there he went to California to continue his geographic education.
He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of California, Berkeley.
He became a full professor at the University of Minnesota in 1968 and there began his
focus on humanistic geography. After fourteen years at the University of Minnesota, he
moved to Madison, Wisconsin and continued his professional career at University of
Wisconsin–Madison as the J.K. Wright and Vilas Professor of Geography (1985–1998).
He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
1986, of the British Academy in 2001, and of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 2002. Tuan was awarded the Cullum Geographical Medal by the American
Geographical Society in 1987.