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.
Pessimistic Rhetoric on the Fringes of Popular Culture
Examines case studies of popular culture as pessimistic rhetorical artifacts, and how non-traditional modes of argumentation can work rhetorically to overcome biases against pessimistic messaging.
Explores the question of how women craft meaningful “belonging" to national, regional, and global communities when belonging as a citizen becomes untenable. Evaluates the rhetorical practices that enable alternative belongings, such as denizenship, cosmopolitan nationalism, and transnational ......
Since its original publication in 1965, Indian Paths of Pennsylvania has remained the standard volume for charting the foot trails forged and followed in Pennsylvania by Native Americans, documenting an era of interaction between Indians and European settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries. With the advent of European settlement, the ......
A collection of essays on the history of the biblical tradition by George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016). Includes studies on law, covenant, and the Hebrew conquest of Palestine, as well as excerpts from Mendenhall’s own autobiography.
Judah and Saul in the Narratives of Genesis and 1 Samuel
Following upon the work of Jewish scholars who have attempted to rehabilitate the notion of chosenness in the Hebrew Bible and that of other scholars who have focused more narrowly on the fate of non-Israelites in the Old Testament, The Unfavored centers on the role of unfavored characters within Israelspecifically, Judah and ......
The Rhetorical Function of Allusion to Genesis 1-3 in the Book of Leviticus
A methodologically constrained examination of the lexical, syntactical, and conceptual correspondence between the opening chapters of Genesis and Leviticus 11, 16, and 26. Explores the potential rhetorical function of allusion for the texts’ original ......
The Middle Bronze Age Ramparts and Gates of the North Slope and Later Fortifications
A collection of scientific and interdisciplinary reports on the excavations and research conducted at Tell el-Borg, north Sinai, between 1998 and 2008, written by the scholars and specialists who worked on the site under the direction of Professor James K. Hoffmeier.
Documents the Lahav Research Project’s work at Tell Halif in Southern Israel, focusing on the team’s excavations and related regional ethnographic research at adjacent Khirbet Khuweilifeh, an early twentieth-century settlement of Bedouin and Arab fellahin clients.
A collection of hundreds of Idumean Aramaic ostraca, with photographs, transcriptions, translations, and commentary. Provides insight into the economic and social lives of Idumeans in the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods.
