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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A Glossary of Old Syrian: ʔ – ḳ is the first of two volumes aimed at the completion of a lexicographical index of the Old Syrian linguistical continuum. This glossary gives a picture, or map, of the Old Syrian lexicon as it can be extracted and reconstructed from the available sources, from the (Old Akkadian-)Eblatic ......
An interdisciplinary exploration of the diverse discourse on divine sonship in ancient Jewish and Christian literature. Authors focus on a range of issues including messianism, deification, eschatological figures, Jesus, interreligious polemics, and the Roman and Jewish backgrounds of early Christian writers and the authors of the Dead Sea ......
Biblical, Archaeological, and Egyptological Perspectives on the Exodus Narratives
The Hebrew Scriptures consider the exodus from Egypt to be Israel’s formative and foundational event. Indeed, the Bible offers no other explanation for Israel’s origin as a people. It is also true that no contemporary record regarding a man named Moses or the Israelites generally, either living in or leaving Egypt has been found. ......
Lecturing, Learning, and Difference in the Long Nineteenth Century
Explores the myriad ways that people in the nineteenth century grappled with questions of learning, belonging, civic participation, and deliberation. Focuses on the dynamics of gender, race, region, and religion, and how individuals and groups often excluded from established institutions developed knowledge useful for public ......
The astrologer-physician Richard Napier (1559-1634) was not only a man of practical science and medicine but also a master of occult arts and a devout parish rector who purportedly held conversations with angels. This new interpretation of Napier reveals him to be a coherent and methodical man whose burning desire for certain, true knowledge ......
Religious Conversion, Media, and Urban Violence in Brazil
Pentecostalism is one of the most rapidly expanding religious-cultural forms in the world. Its rise in popularity is often attributed to its successfully incorporating native cosmologies in new religious frameworks. This volume probes for more complex explanations to this phenomenon in the favelas of Brazil, once one of the most Catholic ......
Examines U.S. obscenity trials in the early twentieth century and how they framed a wide-ranging debate about the printed word’s power to deprave, offend, and shape behavior.
Deliberation and Memory in an Age of Political Gridlock
A rhetorical study of the American political debate on gun violence and gun policy. Examines the role of public memory in shaping this discourse and its eventual policy outcomes.
In this examination of the rise of formalism in the visual arts, Sam Rose uses a close contextual study of Roger Fry and British art writing from 1900 to 1939 to rethink how ideas about form influenced modernist culture and the movement's significance to art history today.