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.
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"Science in fiction," "geek novels," "lab-lit"-whatever one calls them, novels about science open a creative space in which the reading public can experience and think critically about the powers of science to illuminate and transform nature and to create and mitigate social risks. The essays in Under the Literary Microscope examine the ......
A collection of essays examining literary discussions of the role of science, focusing on the interactions between processes of knowledge formation and the socioeconomic and political spheres.
The power of art has always been found in those uncanny spaces between formal abstraction and the narratives of representation. Inseparable parts of a more complex whole, they are the collaborative symbiotic conditions that have created the most compelling works of art since antiquity. Uncanny Congruencies investigates these elliptical ......
Superhero comics reckon with issues of corporeal control. And while they commonly deal in characters of exceptional or superhuman ability, they have also shown an increasing attention and sensitivity to diverse forms of disability, both physical and cognitive. The essays in this collection reveal how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with ......
Superhero comics reckon with issues of corporeal control. And while they commonly deal in characters of exceptional or superhuman ability, they have also shown an increasing attention and sensitivity to diverse forms of disability, both physical and cognitive. The essays in this collection reveal how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with ......
In the opening scene of Twister, Piedro lies in a hospital bed with a wheelchair at his side. Casting a shadow from the doorway, his caretaker remarks on Ohow quickly one gets used to this kind of thing,O as she goes on to empty his catheter bag and help him into his wheelchair.
A photographic essay and narrative documenting the value, ecology, and importance of hemlock and beech trees in eastern North America. Describes the pests and pathogens that are killing them, and addresses solutions that are being sought by scientists and resource stewards.
An Historical Sketch of the Art of Slip-Decoration in the United States
Reprint of a 1903 work exploring the Pennsylvania German folk art of slipware or redware pottery. Explores tools and processes of manufacture, techniques and variations, decoration, motives, coloring, types, and practical uses.
Religious Conversion and the Languages of the Early Spanish Empire
Examines how the Spanish monarchy managed an empire of unprecedented linguistic diversity, making only sporadic efforts to propagate Spanish during the sixteenth century. Challenges the assumption that the pervasiveness of the Spanish language resulted from deliberate linguistic colonization.