R: Find Your Way Back Home

7:30 p.m. in the Berkeley Mendenhall Room

Auguste Renoir, A Road in Louveciennes, ca. 1870, oil on canvas, 38.1 × 46.4 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Home is where the heart is... or is it? Many argue that, regardless of one's occupation and residence, his or her home will always truly be where he or she was born and raised, and that one should feel a special obligation to this location (or perhaps culture or way of life). However, in the modern world, this does not always seem to be the case. With the onset of rapid and relatively cheap transportation, long-distance telecommunications, and, occasionally, an Ivy League degree, many have the ability to travel and work all over the world, moving to where jobs or circumstances are more appealing than those back home. In this post-feudal era, humans are less stationary than ever before, and many move from place to place frequently, essentially choosing where they call home.

What is home? What is the value of one's home? Do we have an obligation towards our home communities above other communities? Should we be allowed to define what home is? Could Yale be a home, if only a temporary one?