As many readers of this blog know, the idea of “place” was a dominant theme in my first book, The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in America (University of Pennsylvania Press). In that book I chronicled Fithian’s deep sense of attachment to his home on the Cohansey River in eighteenth-century Cumberland County, New Jersey. Many readers of the book who know me well have remarked that my connection to my New Jersey roots is evident throughout the narrative. I can’t disagree.
I think a good argument could be made that Fithian was the first New Jersey writer to reflect deeply on a sense of place in this colony/state.
So needless to say I was thrilled to see that Montclair State University is sponsoring a year-long series of lectures and presentations entitled “Jersey: A Sense of Place.” If you are in the Montclair area tonight you should definitely check out Louis Masur’s lecture “Talk about a dream:’ Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision–from New Jersey to the World.” Masur is the author of Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision and is co-editor of the recently released Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen.
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