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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Sound and statuary have had a complicated relationship in Western aesthetic thought since antiquity. Taking as its focus the sounding statue - a type of anthropocentric statue that invites the viewer to imagine any sounds the statue might make - Sculpted Ears rethinks this relationship in light of discourses on ......
The Umman-manda and Its Significance in the First Millennium BC
Who were the Umman-manda? This is a question that has vexed Assyriologists since the early days of the discipline, particularly because the question has different answers at different times and in different places: Hurrians, Elamites, Medes, Cimmerians, Scythians—all have been cast as the Umman-manda by various peoples at various ......
A Social History of Pittsburgh's First Public High School
Traces the history of Schenley High, Pittsburgh's first public high school. Includes 150 original interviews examining issues of class, race, ethnicity, and collaboration, and how these reflect on the history of education in Pittsburgh.
Ziolkowski explores the religious implications of the figure of Don Quixote in Western literature from Cervantes to the present.While scholars and critics in the past have often called attention to the secularizing tendency of modern literature, to the numerous fictional adaptations of the Christ figure on the one hand, and the innumerable ......
A historical novel, first published in 1842, about vengeance mistaken for religious fervor, set against the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. This novel was a critical source for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Introduced and annotated by Hawthorne scholar Richard Kopley.
Assessors, Contractors, and Thieves in the Management of Sacrificial Sheep at the Eanna Temple of Uruk (ca. 625-520 B.C.)
In the mid-first millennium B.C., the Eanna temple at Uruk sacrificed a minimum of nine lambs every day in its basic routine of offerings to its gods; in addition to these, special occasions and festivals demanded the sacrifice of as many as 90 lambs in a single day. All told, the Eanna sacrificed about 4,300 lambs per year. There were more ......
A collection of essays focusing on the relationship between concepts of the holy and the unholy in western European medieval culture. Demonstrates how religion, magic, and science were all modes of engagement with a natural world that was understood to be divinely created and infused with mysterious ......
Inspired by the work of eminent scholar Richard Kieckhefer, The Sacred and the Sinister explores the ambiguities that made (and make) medieval religion and magic so difficult to differentiate. The essays in this collection investigate how the holy and unholy were distinguished in medieval Europe, where their characteristics diverged, ......
