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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Visual Culture and Imperial Power in Baroque New Spain
The Art of Allegiance explores the ways in which Spanish imperial authority was manifested in a compelling system of representation for the subjects of New Spain during the seventeenth century. Michael Schreffler identifies and analyzes a corpus of “source” material—paintings, maps, buildings, and texts—produced ......
William Bartram's love of nature led him to explore the environs of the American Southeast between 1773 and 1777. Here he collected plants and seeds, kept a journal of his observations of nature, and made drawings of the plants and animals he encountered. The completed drawings were sent to his patron in London, and these make up the bulk of ......
Politically and militarily powerful, early modern Scandinavia played an essential role in the development of Central European culture from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. In this volume, Kristoffer Neville shows how the cultural ambitions of Denmark and Sweden were inextricably bound to those of other Central European ......
Johannes Tinctor's Invectives contre la secte de vauderie and the Recollectio casus, status et condicionis Valdensium ydolatrarum by the Anonymous of Arras (1460)
English translations of two major treatises, Tinctor’s Invectives and the anonymous Recollectio, that arose from the famous Arras witch hunts and trial in the mid-fifteenth century in France.
Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature
Studies aroma in Jewish life and literature in Palestine in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods. Uses the history and material culture of perfume and incense as a lens to view daily activities.
Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature
Studies aroma in Jewish life and literature in Palestine in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods. Uses the history and material culture of perfume and incense as a lens to view daily activities.
Referring to several important introductory books written about the archaeology of the land of Israel, William Dever once stated: “However adequate these may be as introductions to the basic data, none makes any attempt to organize the data in terms of social structure. . . . This is a serious deficiency in Syro-Palestinian and biblical ......
The standard Babylonian series Maqlû, “Burning,” comprises eight tablets of incantations in which the text of almost one hundred Akkadian incantations is recorded, and a ritual tablet in which the incantations are cited by their incipit and ritual directions are prescribed. It is the longest and most important magical ......
In 1566 a flamboyant Frenchman who called himself Dionisio Gallo mesmerized crowds of onlookers as he preached in the courtyard of the ducal palace in Venice. Believing he had been anointed by the Virgin, he delivered a message of reform of church and society. Soon he was arrested, tried before the Inquisition, and banished. In The ......
