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.
The Western media largely glossed over the immense human suffering that occurred in Iraq during the embargo of the 1990s and the Iraq War. With this innovative and award-winning graphic novel, French-Iraqi journalist Feurat Alani sets that record straight. The Flavors of Iraq unfolds as a series of one thousand tweets. In them, Alani describes ......
The Lives of Desert Saints in Fourteenth-Century Italy
During the fourteenth century in Western Europe, there was a growing interest in imitating the practices of a group of hermits known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Laypeople and religious alike learned about their rituals not only through readings from the Vitae patrum (Lives of the Desert Fathers) and sermons but also through the images that ......
The longest political conflict of the twentieth century, the Cold War, was carried out on the human senses-and through them. Largely conducted through nonlethal methods, it was a war of competing cultures, politics, and covert operations. While propaganda reached targets through vision and hearing, it also exploited taste, smell, and pain. This ......
Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, and Jimmy Kimmel-these comedians are household names whose satirical takes on politics, the news, and current events receive some of the highest ratings on television. In this book, James E. Caron examines these and other satirists through the lenses of humor studies, cultural theory, and rhetorical and ......
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 ......
Historical Perspectives on Carl Schmitt's Neglected Exception
Over the last one hundred years, the term "sovereignty" has often been associated with the capacity of leaders to declare emergencies and to unleash harmful, extralegal force against those deemed enemies. Friendly Sovereignty explores the blind spots of this influential perspective. Ted H. Miller challenges the view of sovereignty propounded by ......
Born into one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia and raised and educated in that vital center of eighteenth-century American Quakerism, Anne Emlen Mifflin was a progressive force in early America. This detailed and engaging biography, which features Anne's collected writings and selected correspondence, revives her legacy. Anne grew up ......
Iconic Rock Photography from the Beatles to Woodstock and Beyond
In 1964, fifteen-year-old Mike Frankel found himself among professional photojournalists covering a Beatles concert during the band's first tour in the United States. A few years later, he was a regular photographer at the Fillmore East, a storied venue in classic rock. And in 1969, he was onstage at Woodstock, documenting one of the most ......
Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran
A vibrant urban settlement from medieval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, this book reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city. Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Farshid Emami expands our understanding of ......
