Grove City College faculty writes under Oxford auspices

​Grove City College faculty members are under contract with one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious publishers to produce books on religion, philosophy, history and politics in the coming months.

Dr. Christopher Franklin’s “Minimal Libertarianism: Free Will and the Promise of Reduction” is set to be published later this year by Oxford University Press, which has four other Grove City College faculty working on soon-to-be-published editions. Franklin, an assistant professor of Philosophy, is fine-tuning his text after the work-in-progress was reviewed this spring by a team of scholars assembled by the Gothenburg Responsibility Project in Sweden. 

Dr. Gillis Harp, professor of History, is working on “American Protestants and Conservative Politics: A History,” his third book. He says securing a contract with Oxford University Press helped him focus during the years-long process of writing his book, and that being an active, published scholar in his field significantly enriches the classes he teaches at Grove City College.

Oxford has also inked a deal with Dr. Paul Kemeny, professor of Biblical and Religious Studies, to write “The New England Watch and Ward Society” for publication in January 2018. The book explores the Protestant establishment’s efforts to regulate and enforce morality in the early 20th century through the society, which was founded to suppress obscene literature, including Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” and later took on gambling, prostitution and other social ills. The society expressed late nineteenth-century Victorian American values and embodied Protestant efforts to promote them in an increasing intellectually and culturally diverse society.

In addition to that Oxford project, Kemeny is teaming up with Dr. Gary S. Smith ’72, who recently retired as chair of the Department of History, to co-edit a “Handbook on Presbyterian Studies” for the publisher.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Dr. Ryan West is co-editing “Integrity, Honesty, and Truth Seeking” with Christian B. Miller of Wake Forest University for Oxford as well. The volume is an interdisciplinary study that explores the titular virtues through philosophy, theology, psychology, education, history, law and rhetorical studies.

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford, which is one of the world’s oldest and most respected institutions of higher learning. The presses at Oxford has been running since 1478 and is the largest university press in the world. 

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