Touched by This Place: Theological Writing and the Power of Place

In Touched By This Place, Benjamín Valentín brings readers on his journey to answer the question, "Can you tell us where exactly this work was born?" Paying particular attention to Spanish Harlem, where he grew up and lived for twenty-seven years, Valentín encourages readers to recognize how the reality of place as source or wellspring influences and is influenced by human thought, experience, memory, identity, and activity.

Joining a broader movement of place studies in the humanities and social sciences, Touched By This Place calls Christian theology to return to place and places-based thinking and demonstrated this return with a careful attention to and love for the place one calls "home."

Benjamín Valentín is a diasporic Puerto Rican by way of East Harlem in New York City. A cross-disciplinary scholar, he is professor of theology and Latinx studies at the Clough School of Theology and Ministry, Boston College. He has been a frequent faculty member in the Hispanic Summer Program and, since 1999, has worked with the Hispanic Theological Initiative Consortium.