琳达·帕特森·米勒, the 2011-12 Penn State laureate and professor of 英语 at 宾州州立大学阿宾顿分校, is sharing her thoughts and observations of her laureate experience as she journeys across the Commonwealth aiming to engage people in the beauty of the humanities; specifically early 20th-century American literature and art. “Literary Landings” is a travelogue scheduled to appear during the fall 2011 and spring 2012 semesters on Penn State Live and in Penn State 新闻wires. 在第一篇题为“回家”的文章中,” read about Miller’s 宾西法尼亚 roots and join her on her “personal and public quest for self and home.”
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Literary Landings with the 宾州州立大学桂冠获得者: Coming 首页
作者:琳达·帕特森·米勒，2011-12年推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜获奖者
2011年8月22日
作为宾州州立大学第一位人文学科的获奖者, 为了来年, 我觉得我要回家了. 我在美国中西部出生并长大, where I explored Ernest Hemingway’s Michigan lake country during magical summers, 住在公园岭, 生病了.这里距离海明威的芝加哥郊区橡树公园不远. 我年轻时的中西部深深吸引了我, and still does (as evidenced in my research and writing about all those early 20th-century American writers who, 正如尼克·卡罗威在《推荐全球最大网赌正规平台欢迎您》中所描述的那样, 他们的内心是中西部人，即使他们向东迁移。).
But even as I grew up in Michigan and 生病了inois, I felt the pull of "Penn's Woods." My father’s father repaired train engines in the 宾西法尼亚 railroads, and my father and his two brothers came to know the plaintive whistles of locomotives as they marveled over the impossible arc of the Horseshoe Curve. 很多次全家去朱尼亚塔旅行, 霍利戴斯伯格, Liverpool and other Commonwealth places where my Scots-Irish and German forebears lived, I discovered why my father boasted that his native state was "The Garden Spot of the Universe." So when Penn State proposed hiring me as an assistant professor of 英语 a while back, my interview visit to State College seemed almost like a homecoming to my father’s heartland.
The University, like the state, found a big place in my heart. As I drove west from Philadelphia, negotiating the tangle of highways through Harrisburg (with U.S. 322号西路(我的指南针), I recall my sudden and unexpected confrontation just past Harrisburg with the Susquehanna River as it opened out flat and wide. 时间似乎在流逝, and there I was wading with my cousins in some shallow 宾西法尼亚 river beyond the call to dinner. I saw the angle of the light glancing off the water and the way the trees filtered the clouds as I skidded stones across the slick surfaces that mirrored time. This mental landscape stayed with me as I drove north along the Susquehanna River, until I crossed over to pick up along the Juniata River where it forked westward as the countryside began to climb. 山那边是欢乐谷.
Years later, this country of my father's heart continues to tug at me. I think about how we are all, in one way or another, perpetually searching for home. 家是一个地方还是一种精神状态? Members of America’s so-called "Lost Generation" of the 1920s were accused of being lost. “你们都是一代人,格特鲁德·斯坦告诉海明威, 正如他在巴黎回忆录《推荐全球最大网赌正规平台欢迎您》中回忆的那样.”“那就是你. 你们都是这样 ... 你们这些在战争中服役的年轻人. 你们是迷惘的一代." Hemingway reflected on this as he walked back to his Paris apartment from Stein's salon and decided that "all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be.“关键是, 我想, is not to flounder in one's "lostness" but rather to go in search of self and "home." The American poet Archibald MacLeish disagreed with the description of himself and his colleagues as "lost" because he believed that they were not lost so much as the world was lost to them. One of the tenets of modernist art that grew out of this search for validity and truth proclaimed that people had embraced a willed blindness, 只看他们想看的东西. Art would lead the way to show them who they were -- and who we are.
I invite you to join me on my personal and public quest for self and home as I travel throughout the state this year so as to explore with you what it means to be human. Drawing on my research and writing on American literature and art, 特别是在20世纪, I will be inviting a variety of audiences throughout the state to consider the ways in which a study of the humanities helps to discover and document our lives, 一句话，向自己展示自己. Even as I talk about American diaries and the art of letters and literature during my year as laureate, I will be maintaining an ongoing journal of my travels and encounters in 宾西法尼亚. 我希望你能一起去兜风.
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To comment or to ask the laureate a question, contact 琳达米勒 at (电子邮件保护).
For more information on the Penn State laureate and 琳达米勒 go online to http://laureate.事业单位.edu 和/或 http://live.nohuwin.net/tag/linda_miller.
