FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (1/05)
Contact: Dr. Steve Shelburne, 318-869-5254, or Lynn Stewart, Centenary News Service, 318-869-5120

Race Relations Scholar Charles Gallagher at Centenary Jan. 24-28 as Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture

SHREVEPORT, LA — Dr. Charles A. Gallagher of Georgia State University will be at Centenary College of Louisiana as an Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture during the week of Jan. 24-28.

Gallagher will give two public talks and will meet with individual classes and groups.

On Tuesday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m. in Kilpatrick Auditorium, Gallager will speak about "Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors: Immigration and the New Obstacles to Achieving the American Dream."

His topic will be "Racism is Dead, Long Live Race: Race Relations in an Era of Color Blindness" at 11:10 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 27, also in Kilpatrick Auditorium.

Gallagher is a professor in the Department of Sociology and is the race and urban studies concentration director at Georgia State University. His research focuses on racial and social inequality, immigration urban sociology and the ways in which the media, the state and popular culture shape ideas of race. He has published articles on the sociological functions of colorblind political narratives, how racial categories expand and contract within the context of interracial marriages, race theory,
racial innumeracy and how one's ethnic history shapes perceptions of privilege.

His reader Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity (2nd edition, McGraw-Hill) is used in over 200 colleges and universities throughout the country. He has been honored with four teaching awards, most recently the Michael Harrington Distinguished teaching from the National Forum on Poverty and Inequality (2002) and the Georgia State University's College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award (2001).

He has been interviewed dozens of times by local and national news and media outlets. He is currently finishing a book on race relations based on interviews with 150 whites from around the country and will be starting a project on how racial disparities in access to health care are shaped by social and cultural factors.

Centenary’s Attaway professorships are named in honor of the late Douglas and Marion Attaway. They combine the advantages of guest speakers and internship programs as they provide brief residencies as the fellows interact personally with students and the community. Like internships, the Attaway professors play a mentoring role that encourages students to engage in similar intellectual endeavors. As guest speakers, the Attaway professors bring to campus perspectives that are often underrepresented in the academy.

- 30 -