Book includes Grove City professor’s contribution

Staff report

GROVE CITY, PA.

Todd Allen, professor of communication studies at Grove City College, contributed to a recently released book “Black Scholars in White Space: New Vistas in African-American Studies from the Christian Academy.”

The book highlights recent research from a diverse group of black scholars from a variety of Christian colleges and universities.

The contributors span the humanities and social sciences and examine issues in public policy, church/state relations, health care, higher education, theological anthropology and African-American history.

Allen wrote chapter nine of the book: “What Do These Stones Mean? Civil Rights Tourism as an Act of Remembrance.”

Allen argues that the civil-rights movement and the tourism industry that has grown up around it are representative of the power of God to bring people together through oppression.

For generations born after the successes of the civil-rights movement, acts of remembrance in the form of tourism, monuments, memorials and celebrations serve as reminders of the past.

“Unfortunately many today are not as knowledgeable of this chapter of American history as they should be,” Allen said.