Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

A study of the concept of artistic process in the Western tradition of the visual arts. Focuses on modern and contemporary art and analyzes the development of process as a discourse that increasingly locates the primary value of art in the artist's creative labor.

A collection of essays on the American collecting of Italian Baroque paintings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Looks at the influence of art exhibitions and exhibition catalogues on the understanding and popularity of Italian Baroque art.

Explores Theophilus' On Diverse Arts, a twelfth-century treatise on artistic techniques. Examines the system of values according to which medieval artists operated and created art objects.

Examines the influence of experimental science, concerned with the workings of the body, the mind, and their various pathologies, on the works of late nineteenth-century artists Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard, August Strindberg, and Edvard Munch.

Explores the aftermath of 9/11 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Describes how the local community remembered the event and how it was affected by national media attention. Follows the creation of the national memorial built at the site to honor those aboard Flight 93.

Explores the history of horse-human relationships over the long eighteenth century, and how these relationships in turn influenced performances of gender. Examines the agential influence of horses in their riders' lives, horses on stage and the early circus, and the politicization of human-animal being.

Explores the vibrant visual and theatrical culture of eighteenth-century England. Focuses on the central role of images in the invention of modern celebrity culture.

An analysis of the constituent elements of Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 presidential election campaign, all of which contributed to his victory then and have proved foundational for the way campaigns and politics more broadly are conducted now.

Examines the role of anger and forgiveness in the autobiographical, literary, and philosophical works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Argues that for Rousseau, anger is an inevitable outcome of social intercourse, and that forgiveness is central to his understanding of subjectivity and hence of moral and political action.

Focusing on the Handbook of 809, explores how the liberal arts, and in particular astronomy, experienced a revival in the ninth-century court of Charlemagne. Documents the utility of the constellations for prelates who needed to fix the floating feast of Easter and reckon time.

Examines post-Cold War discourses about the use of power to promote international security. Uses case studies of United Nations interventions in Haiti and Croatia to highlight the dynamics at play in encounters between local societies and international peacekeepers.

A listing of burials in various Moravian cemeteries in Lititz, Pennsylvania. Originally published in 1906.

Brings together autobiographical narratives and reflections by philosophers who were brought up in strict religious environments.

The role of elites vis-a-vis the mass public in the construction and successful functioning of democracy has been a subject of central interest to political theorists. This book explores this theme in Thucydides' famous history of the Peloponnesian War as a way of rendering our thoughts about this relationship in our own modern democracy.

Examines the political and social influences behind the creation of the postrevolutionary Mexican welfare state in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

This work provides a re-examination of the evidence about the citizen's capacity for self-governance and what it means for the future of democratic politics, from both empirical and normative perspectives.

Explores the relationship between culture and power in Imperial Russia. Argues that Russia's performing arts were part of a vibrant public culture that was usually ambivalent or hostile to the tumultuous political events of the revolutionary era.

Examines the emergence of "will therapy" and its impact on arts and culture in Germany after 1900. This book leads readers through cross sections of modern German cultural history, including not only literature and aesthetics but also self-help medicine, economics, body culture, and pedagogy.

Traces the Russian fascination with local guides to the idea of kraevedenie. This book investigates the history of kraevedenie, showing how St Petersburg-based scholars and institutions have played a central role in the evolution of the discipline.

These essays offer new vistas on the idea of the vernacular in contexts as diverse as Ramon Llull's prefiguration of universal grammar, the orthography of Early Middle English, the struggle for linguistic purity in Early Modern Dutch, and the construction of standard Serbian and Romanian in the waning decades of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Joel Rosenthal explores some familiar sources from 14th and 15th century England, to show how memories and recollections can be used to build a compelling portrait of daily life in the late Middle Ages. questions of testimony, memory and narrative are explored.

"A reassessment of metaethics that attempts to undermine the nature/normativity or world/language divide, and offer an alternative account of the world-language relationship. Advocates the need to replace the metaphor of foundations with a metaphor about stability. Incorporates Wittgenstein and contemporary feminist ethicists"--Provided by publisher.

These essays offer new vistas on the idea of the vernacular in contexts as diverse as Ramon Llull's prefiguration of universal grammar, the orthography of Early Middle English, the struggle for linguistic purity in Early Modern Dutch, and the construction of standard Serbian and Romanian in the waning decades of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

A study of anarchism in twentieth-century France during the interwar years. Focuses on anarchist demands for personal autonomy and sexual liberation. Argues that these ideals, as well as anarchist hatred of the government, found favor with members of the artistic avant-garde, especially the surrealists.

Offers a theory of performative deliberation, arguing that speech acts, performances, and performatives constitute citizens, agency, and events. Through analysis of human rights conflicts, it reveals difference's productivity and necessity as it demonstrates the power of performative theory.

Reevaluates Jean-Jacques Rousseau through the lens of music theory to question his contribution to thinking about music as an aesthetic force in social life. Links Rousseau's understanding of concepts in music to the problem of the individual's relationship to the social order.

Explores the role of the sacrament of penance in the religion and society of early modern Spain. Examines how secular and ecclesiastical authorities used confession to defend against heresy and to bring reforms to the Catholic Church.

Steele brings the problem of reference into contemporary critical debates about representation. By defining realism in terms of linguistic practices instead of representational accuracy, this study liberates reference from traditional realist concerns with the empirical universe. Realism thus becomes only one kind of referential practice.

A longitudinal study of an Anglo-Saxon cult from its inception in the late 17th century through the Reformation. This work examines the production and reception of texts that supported the cult of AEthelthryth, an East Anglian princess who had resisted the conjugal demands of two political marriages to maintain her virginity.