Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—widely in books, journals, and digital publications.
Scholarly publishing has faced monumental challenges over the past few decades. The Press takes its place among those institutions moving the enterprise forward. Its innovative projects continue to identify and embrace the technological advances and business models that ensure scholarly publishing will remain feasible, and widely accessible, well into the future.
In this book, James H. Rubin explores these conditions and shows how Monets work-said to be a harbinger of abstraction-appeals not only to the eye but also to something deep in modern consciousness. The myth of Impressionism is that it was reviled and misunderstood, but by the 1890s Monet was rich by anyones standards.
This book provides a bidirectional investigation of Asia's spatiotemporality by asking how Asia is located and how localities are Asianized. Historical and theoretical inquiries into architecture and urbanism in order to trace a notional "common divisor" are integrated with readings of this Asian imagery. Such a common divisor is conditioned to ......
Examines motion pictures produced or sponsored by Ford Motor Company from a rhetorical perspective, demonstrating how the films reveal a long-term rhetorical project that has helped embed corporations into many of the social systems guiding societies today.
Examines the life of Catherine of Aragon, focusing on her personal possessions and the items she bequeathed to those she left behind, to better understand her as a daughter, wife, widow, mother, and friend; a collector of art and books; a devout Catholic; and a patron of writers and universities.
The Philosophy of Generosity in Shakespeare and Marlowe
Original readings of Dr. Faustus, The Merchant of Venice, Edward II, King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and The Tempest, in which Sean Lawrence challenges the tendency to reflexively understand gifts as exchanges or negotiations. Lawrence uses the philosophies of Levinas and Derrida to argue that these plays depict a radical generosity that breaks the ......
In 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing faint bloodstained imprints was presented to tens of thousands of worshippers in Turin, Italy, as one of the original shrouds used to prepare Jesus Christ's body for entombment. From that year into the next century, the Shroud of Turin emerged as Christianity's preeminent religious artifact. In an ......
A masterful combination of literary study and author biography, How Sherlock Pulled the Trick guides us through the parallel careers of two inseparable men: Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
A Sensory History Manifesto is a brief and timely meditation on the state of the field. It invites historians who are unfamiliar with sensory history to adopt some of its insights and practices, and it urges current practitioners to think in new ways about writing histories of the senses.
