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.
How Nazi Persecution Shaped the Struggle for LGBTQ+ Rights
The Third Reich subjected some 100,000 individuals to a pernicious anti-homosexual campaign that included censorship, surveillance, medical experimentation, and death. Credible scholarship suggests that as many as 15,000 were interned in concentration camps, though the actual names and numbers of all those who suffered and died will never be ......
Evangelical Literature and the Missionary Movement in Republican China
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, China underwent tumultuous times—from nation building and the New Culture Movement to the Japanese occupation and the renunciations accompanying the Korean War.
Lippmann, Dewey, and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century
Almost one hundred years have passed since Walter Lippmann and John Dewey published their famous reflections on the "problems of the public," but their thoughts remain surprisingly relevant as resources for thinking through our current crisis-plagued predicament. This book takes stock of the reception history of Lippmann's and Dewey's ideas about ......
The nations of the global north find themselves in a post-secular or post-Christian period, one in which the practice, expression, and effects of religion are undergoing massive shifts. In Persuasions of God, Paul Lynch pursues a project of "theorhetoric," a radical new approach to speaking about the divine. Searching for new religious forms ......
In African literature, Christianity has long been represented as a foreign religion, associated with the history and ongoing legacies of European colonialism and mission. But in recent decades, writers have begun to engage with it in more complex, ambivalent, and at times liberatory ways that are reflective of the religion's tremendous growth and ......
In African literature, Christianity has long been represented as a foreign religion, associated with the history and ongoing legacies of European colonialism and mission. But in recent decades, writers have begun to engage with it in more complex, ambivalent, and at times liberatory ways that are reflective of the religion's tremendous growth and ......
The Middle Ages provide us with one of the richest repositories of art in the West. Yet the rise in the production of art made for and by Jews-especially in the form of illuminated manuscripts-is often neglected in general surveys or viewed as a mere emulation of Christian art during this period. In People of the Image, Marc Michael Epstein ......
The American Institute of Iranian Studies is devoted to fostering research in the field of Iranian studies and promoting scholarly exchange between the United States and Iran. This collection of essays addresses the history and development of Iranian studies in the United States and the pivotal role of the Institute in furthering research in the ......
Rhetorics of Undocumented Immigration in the Deterrence Era
US immigration policy along the southwestern border is deadly. Since 1994, the US Border Patrol has implemented a federal immigration strategy known as "prevention through deterrence," which closed off many urban entry points along the US-Mexico border and militarized urban border crossings. This policy forced undocumented migrants to cross ......
