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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Volume 1: Literary Sources on Old Babylonian Religion
A collection of seventeen previously unpublished Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, dating to ca. 2000 BC and containing works of Sumerian religious poetry. Includes a general introduction, transliterations, translations, commentaries, hand-copies and photographs of all ......
The prevalence of evil and violence in the world is a growing focus of scholarly attention, especially violence done in the name of religion and violence found within the pages of the Old Testament. Many atheists consider this reason enough to reject the notion of a supreme deity. Some Christians attempt to exonerate God by reinterpreting ......
What is it about puzzles that drives us to figure them out? In this unique and innovative book, Bret L. Rothstein explores how mechanical problems delight and frustrate us, distracting our attention from recognizably useful activities and directing it toward something that may be even more important.
Considers the development of the pastoral in sixteenth-century Venice as an urban phenomenon specific to the lagoon. Studies Venetian urban gardens as actual places, imaginary spaces, and fantasies of urban planning challenged by ecological concerns.
The Emperors' Slaves in the Makings of Christianity
Examines the role of the Roman emperors’ slaves in the rise of Christianity, and how imperial slaves were essential to early Christians’ self-conception as a distinct people in the Mediterranean.
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, ......
In this volume, Joshua Eckhardt examines the religious texts and books that surrounded the poems, sermons, and inscriptions of the early modern poet and preacher John Donne. Focusing on the material realities legible in manuscripts and Sammelbände, bookshops and private libraries, this book uncovers the myriad ways in which ......
By 1893, the Supreme Court had officially declared women to be citizens, but most did not have the legal right to vote. In Practicing Citizenship, Kristy Maddux provides a glimpse at an unprecedented alternative act of citizenship by women of the time: their deliberative participation in the Chicago’s World’s Fair of ......
Borges Beyond the Visible presents radically new readings of some of Jorge Luis Borges’s most celebrated stories. Focusing on the tensions between fiction and intimacy, Max Ubelaker Andrade shows how Borges employed his famous intertextual puzzles to create multilayered texts that privately transformed his personal relationships with ......
