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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Giorgio Vasari and the Traditions of Humanist Discourse
A study based on the text, the Lives of the Artists, by Giorgio Vasari. Discusses how the visual arts in the Renaisssance were an occasion for delight or pleasure. Argues that such an attention was encouraged by certain social and intellectual practices.
A collection of writings by papal advisor and historian Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540), including letters, treatises, reports, and orations spanning his long career in service to the Medici.
A papal advisor and sixteenth-century power broker, Francesco Guicciardini wrote voluminously throughout his time in service to the Medici. The texts in this volume chart his career chronologically, revealing how an intellectual whose philosophy of self-interest failed not only to perceive the interests of others but ultimately to serve his ......
In The Dark Side of Genius, Laurinda Dixon examines melancholia as a philosophical, medical, and social phenomenon in early modern art. Once considered to have a physical and psychic disorder, the melancholic combined positive aspects of genius and breeding with the negative qualities of depression and obsession. By focusing on four ......
Examines "melancholia" as a philosophical, medical, and social phenomenon in early modern art. Argues that, despite advances in art and science, the topos of the dispirited intellectual continues to function metaphorically as a locus for society's fears and tensions.
Surrealism and Exhibition Practice in France, 1925-1941
Explores the emergence of an amateur class of curators in France between the world wars. Focuses on the Surrealist writers and artists who developed an alternative curatorial practice to that pursued by the community of professionally trained curators and exclusive art dealers.
Taking his cue from Philadelphia-born novelist Charles Brockden Brown’s Annals of Europe and America, which contends that America is shaped most noticeably by the international struggle between Great Britain and France for control of the world trade market, Stephen Shapiro charts the advent, decline, and reinvigoration of the ......
A collection of essays on the history of the biblical tradition by George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016). Includes studies on law, covenant, and the Hebrew conquest of Palestine, as well as excerpts from Mendenhall’s own autobiography.
