Touched by This Place

"Benjamin Valentin knows place. This beautiful meditation on his place, Spanish Harlem, captures the importance of place for theological reflection and for moral reasoning. This is a book that is both timely and will shortly become timeless." -Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School

"Announcing a 'return to place moment,' Ben Valentin gathers the dimensions, the populations, the urgencies of our living material located-ness into something much richer than 'context'-into the displaced relationality of place itself. His decolonial pragmatics empowers a radically engaging alternative, neighborly in its immediacy, elegant in its transdisciplinary scope-and inviting in its call." -Catherine Keller, George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology, Drew Theological School

"With characteristic lucidity and wisdom, Benjamin Valentin invites contextual theologians and philosophers to appreciate more fully the materialist and imaginative dimensions of place. This highly creative interdisciplinary study offers new and refreshing pathways forward." -Christopher D. Tirres, Michael J. Buckley Endowed Chair, Santa Clara University

"Benjamin Valentin's beautifully written book takes readers on a prophetic journey to consider the vital consequence of place in all theological work, especially work engaging questions of justice. Expect to have your theological imagination stretched." -Nancy Pineda-Madrid, president, Catholic Theological Society of America, and T. Marie Chilton Chair of Catholic Theology, Loyola Marymount University