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.
Three hundred million years ago, ferns dominated the earth’s surface, forming extensive marshes and forests with heights of over twenty-five meters. Today, ferns and their allies are still abundantly represented in the plant world, with somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 species identified and recognized. These nonflowering, nonseeding, ......
While the decline of the male hero in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature is usually studied in isolation, Druxes uses a major manifestation of this phenomenon—the failing power of the Faust myth—as an interpretive lens through which to illuminate the corresponding rise in the viability of female Faustian heroes or would-be ......
Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women's Academy
Decorative handcrafts are commonly associated with traditional femininity and unthreatening docility. However, the artists connected with interwar Vienna's female Secession created craft-based artworks that may be understood as sites of feminist resistance. In this book, historian Megan Brandow-Faller tells the story of how these artists ......
The feast of Corpus Christi, one of the most solemn feasts of the Latin Church, can be traced to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and its resolution of disputes over the nature of the Eucharist. The feast was first celebrated in Liège in 1246, thanks largely to the efforts of a religious woman, Juliana of Mont Cornillon, who not only ......
By "the fear of freedom" Greer means the unconscious flight from the heavy burden of individual choice an open society lays upon its members. The miraculous represents a heavenly power brought down to earth and tied to the life of the community. Understanding how miracles were perceived in the late antiquity requires us to put aside the ......
The period of the demise of the kingdom of Judah at the end of the 6th century B.C.E., the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, the exile of the elite to Babylon, and the reshaping of the territory of the new province of Judah, culminating at the end of the century with the first return of exiles—all have been subjects of intense ......
In the 1970s, best friends Polly and April collect hazy knowledge about the “facts of life”—sex, reproduction, and gender norms—through the gossip of older girls, magazines and books, and the everyday behavior of their families and teachers. What they learn reinforces their assumption that they will grow up to become ......
American Youth and the Changing Norms of Democratic Engagement
Examines, through an analysis of seven high school newspapers, the evolution of civic and political participation among young people in the United States since 1965.
American Youth and the Changing Norms of Democratic Engagement
Examines, through an analysis of seven high school newspapers, the evolution of civic and political participation among young people in the United States since 1965.