Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

Examines the administrative system and function of stamp impressions on storage jars in ancient Israel, illustrating the history of Judah during six centuries of subjugation to the empires that ruled the region.

A report of archaeological excavations at the City of David, the southeastern hill of second- and first-millennium BCE Jerusalem, conducted under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

A narrative of the events that led the author to a career in archaeology and eventually to 34 years as director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.

Investigates the study of Sumerian by nonnative Akkadian speakers during the Old Babylonian period in areas outside major cities whose schools have been studied extensively. Provides transliterations and translations of 715 cuneiform school exercise texts.

Examines how the gospel of John draws on a number of Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions for the conception of the abyss and sea in Revelation, and how this background plays a key role in how the abyss functions in scripture.

A collection of essays addressing the nexus of religion and geography in the ancient Near East, presenting several case studies that cover a range of time periods and areas to illuminate the diverse phenomena that occur when religion is viewed through the lenses of space and place.

An exploration of the complexities of the human brain in graphic novel format.

A narrative, in graphic novel format, following Cristina Duran and Miguel Angel Giner Bou as they rebuild and reinvent themselves after their daughter Laia is born with cerebral palsy. Their story continues through the arduous process of adopting their second daughter, Selam, from Ethiopia.

Examines the life and work of William Lamport (d. 1659), an Irish rebel, soldier, poet, and thinker who was burned at the stake by the Inquisition in Mexico. Includes a collection of Lamport's most representative writings, including poetry, psalms, and a plan for a Mexican uprising against Spain.

Examines Europe's discovery of ancient Iran, first in philology and then in art history, and explores the Persian Revival movement in light of imperial strategies of power, selfhood, and statehood in British India and Zand-Qajar-Pahlavi Iran.

Considers the relation of anarchist ideology to avant-garde sculpture through an examination of iconic artists and writers whose work transformed European modernism: Jacob Epstein, Oscar Wilde, Umberto Boccioni, F. T. Marinetti, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and Ezra Pound.

Examines the intersection of private art collecting, domestic social life, and recreational practices in Renaissance Venice.

A collection of essays delineating the centuries-long dialogue of Jews and Jewish culture with China, all under the overarching theme of cultural translation.

Eating and drinking?vital to all human beings?were of central importance to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Culinary Shakespeare, the first collection devoted solely to the study of food and drink in Shakespeare's plays, reframes questions about cuisine, eating, and meals in early modern drama. As a result, Shakespearean scenes that have long been identified as important and influential by scholars can now be considered in terms of another revealing cultural marker?that of culinary dynamics.Renaissance scholars, as David Goldstein and Amy Tigner point out, have only begun to grapple with the importance of cuisine in literature. An earlier generation of criticism concerned itself principally with cataloguing the foodstuffs in the plays. Recent analyses have operated largely within debates about humoralism and dietary literature, consumption, and interiority, working to historicize food in relation to the early modern body. The essays in Culinary Shakespeare build upon that prior focus on individual bodily experience but also transcend it, emphasizing the aesthetic, communal, and philosophical aspects of food, while also presenting valuable theoretical background. As various essays demonstrate, many of the central issues in Shakespeare studies can be elucidated by turning our attention to the study of food and drink. The societal and religious associations of drink, for example, or the economic implications of ingredients gathered from other lands, have meaningful implications for our understanding of both early modern and contemporary periods?including aspects of community, politics, local and global food production, biopower and the state, addiction, performativity, posthumanism, and the relationship between art and food. Culinary Shakespeare seeks to open new interpretive possibilities and will be of interest to scholars and students of Shakespeare and the early modern period as well as to those in food studies, food history, ecology, gender and domesticity, and critical theory.

A collection of essays addressing the relevance, explanatory power, and exclusionary effects of the technical vocabulary of rhetorical theory.

Explores some of the animals, both real and mythical, found in biblical, talmudic, midrashic, and kabbalistic sources.

Explores the use of anti-democratic language in US presidential elections, using examples detailing the political, economic, and cultural elements that make such appeals more likely.

Examines the life of Catherine of Aragon, focusing on her personal possessions and the items she bequeathed to those she left behind, to better understand her as a daughter, wife, widow, mother, and friend; a collector of art and books; a devout Catholic; and a patron of writers and universities.

Examines Jewish surnames in Romanian-speaking lands from the sixteenth century until 1944, exploring how the names reflect Jews' interactions with their surroundings. Uses onomastic methodology to substantiate and complement historical research.

Examines political calls for market-based education reform and explores the efforts of public-school advocates to build democratically spirited connections between schools and communities.

A collection of essays addressing the relevance, explanatory power, and exclusionary effects of the technical vocabulary of rhetorical theory.

A collection of essays examining the conceptual and methodological issues that currently inform the study of text and ritual in the Pentateuch.

Examines a series of linked case studies that not only highlight moments of seeming disconnect between seeing and believing, including hoaxes, miracles, spirit paintings, manipulated photographs, and holograms, but also offer a sensory history of ways of seeing.

Revisits the theme of alienation in modernist literature, finding an alternative aesthetic centered on the experience of double exile. Explores examples drawn from the cultural groupings of the New Negro movement, Parisian expatriates in the 1920s, and the queer expatriate scene in Los Angeles before Stonewall.

Studies popular tropes in the United States for Mexican immigrants, tracing the history and usage of terms that were shaped by race, class, and national borders.