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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The Synaesthetic Metaphor Across the Arts in European Modernism
Inspired by Richard Wagner's idea of the total artwork, European modernist artists began to pursue multimedia projects that mixed colors, sounds, and shapes. Polina Dimova's At the Crossroads of the Senses traces this new sensory experience of synaesthesia-the physiological or figurative blending of senses-as a modernist phenomenon from its ......
Art, Animals, and European Court Culture, 1400-1550
Animal Sightings challenges two common ideas about the depiction of animals in early modern European court art: first, that the human figure relegated animals to peripheral and often symbolic roles, both compositionally and conceptually, and second, that the representation of animals during this period was predominantly tied to a growing interest ......
In the 1890s, French poet and playwright Alfred Jarry founded pataphysics, the absurdist "science of imaginary solutions," a concept that has been nominally recognized as the precursor to Dadaism, Surrealism, and the Theater of the Absurd, among other movements. Over a century after Jarry "made the gesture of dying," Katie L. Price and Michael R. ......
Tereza never thought she would go bald before her boyfriend did. She couldnt imagine being unable to sweep her hair up in a ponytail or to style it in other ways. But when she lost all her hair in just a couple of months due to alopecia, her perspective on relationships and work-and above all, herself- radically changed.
In today's diverse societies, museums are the primary institutions within the public sphere in which individuals can both engage critical thought and celebrate community. This volume uses the lens of rhetoric to explore the role these societal repositories play in establishing and altering cultural heritage and national identity. ......
Fat girl problems. Derided by her high-school peers for being overweight, Rachel finally found a sense of purpose and belonging in a promising career as an EMT-that is, until her body got in the way. Shrink is a work of graphic medicine that depicts the emotional and physical realities of inhabiting a large body in a world that is constantly ......
For over 40 years, Jack M. Sasson has been studying and commenting on the cuneiform archives from Mari on the Euphrates River, especially those from the age of Hammurabi of Babylon. Among Mari's wealth of documents, some of the most interesting are letters from and to kings, their advisers and functionaries, their wives and daughters, their ......
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.
Since its publication in 2008, A Grammar of the Hittite Language has been the definitive Hittite reference and teaching tool. This new edition brings Hoffner and Melchert's essential work up to date, incorporating the dramatic progress achieved in the field over the past fifteen years. Heavily revised and expanded, the second edition recasts the ......
