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.
A Genealogy of the Female Body from Medieval Iberia to SoCal Chicanx Art
The Wound and the Stitch traces a history of imagery and language centered on the concept of woundedness and the stitching together of fragmented selves. Focusing particularly on California and its historical violences against Chicanx bodies, Loretta Victoria Ramirez argues that woundedness has become a ubiquitous and significant form of Chicanx ......
Landscape, Urban Planning, and Identity in the Medieval Maghrib
Over the course of the Almoravid (1040-1147) and Almohad (1121-1269) dynasties, medieval Marrakesh evolved from an informal military encampment into a thriving metropolis that attempted to translate a local and distinctly rural past into a broad, imperial architectural vernacular. In Marrakesh and the Mountains, Abbey Stockstill convincingly ......
Through narrative, verse, and art, Where the Grass Still Sings celebrates the many tiny creatures that play crucial roles in our ecosystems-as well as the people on the front lines of the fight to save them. Weaving art and science with inspiring stories of people doing their part to protect insects and the environment, author Heather Swan takes ......
This volume examines the cultural legacy of Jewish emigration from the Maghreb and the Middle East in the years following 1948. Drawing on the remarkable cinematic and literary output of the last twenty years, this collection posits loss as a new conceptual framework in which to understand Jewish-Muslim relations. Whereas previous studies of ......
The United States has a hate problem. In recent years, hate speech has led not only to deep division in our politics but also to violence, murder, and even insurrection. And yet established constitutional jurisprudence holds that all speech is protected as "content neutral" and that the proper democratic response to hateful expression is not ......
Citizenship and Resistance in the Black Freedom Movement
The urban renewal policies stemming from the 1954 Housing Act and 1956 Highway Act destroyed the economic centers of many Black neighborhoods in the United States. Struggle for the City recovers the agency and solidarity of African American residents confronting this diagnosis of "blight" in northern cities in the 1950s and 1960s.
Over the last few decades, the field of trauma studies has shed new light on biblical texts that deal with individual and collective catastrophe. In The Language of Trauma in the Psalms, Danilo Verde advances the conversation, moving beyond the emphasis on healing that prevails in most literary trauma studies. Using the lens of cognitive ......
Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Regime du corps
In 1256, the countess of Provence, Beatrice of Savoy, enlisted her personal physician to create a health handbook to share with her daughters. Written in French and known as the Regime du corps, this health guide would become popular and influential, with nearly seventy surviving copies made over the next two hundred years and translations in at ......
With an Edition of Middle English and Middle Scots Pastourelles
Centering on the difficult and important subject of medieval rape culture, this book brings Middle English and Scots texts into conversation with contemporary discourses on sexual assault and the #MeToo movement. The book explores the topic in the late medieval lyric genre known as the pastourelle and in related literary works, including chivalric ......
