Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

Argues that active involvement in politics can be deeply fulfilling to the individual, and that the construction of identity for all activists is both about morality and about what one wants for oneself. Includes interviews with environmental, social justice, and pro-life activists.

Examines literary portrayals of women who practice healing and love magic, and argues that these figures were modeled on informally trained practitioners common in the magico-medical paradigm of the high Middle Ages, and were well-respected and successful.

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

An analysis of recent government efforts to promote nontraditional foreign direct investment (FDI) in Costa Rica; the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; and Chile. For comparative purposes, the book also examines the highly successful cases of Ireland and Singapore.

Clothing figured prominently in twelfth-century France, where exotic fabrics and furs came to define a social elite. This interdisciplinary book explores how writers of this era used clothing as a signifier with multiple meanings for many narrative purposes. It shows that representations of clothing are not mere embellishments to the text.

An analysis of economic issues and political conditions for black Americans, based on quantitative and qualitative data from six Florida cities.

Explores the relationships between science and other societal sectors, notably law, religion, government and public culture, in terms of the concepts of expert and moral authority.

A discussion of women thinkers in political philosophy, and the nature of political inquiry.

Studies the path of natural philosophy (i.e., physics) from Isaac Newton through Scotland into the nineteenth-century background to the modern revolution in physics. Examines how the history of science has been influenced by John Robison and other notable intellectuals of the Scottish Enlightenment.

This is an anthology of recent scholarship on the African-American experience in Pennsylvania. The book offers an account of the state's black history to date, emphasizing the interplay of class and race from the origins of the Commonwealth to the late-20th century.

Presents a study of how popular images and the language in which they are embedded affect the making of Latin American foreign policy in the United States. In particular, the book looks at how the Reagan administration tried to sell its policy on Nicaragua to the American public in 1986.

An English translation of Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime, originally written in Latin in the sixteenth-century by Jean Bodin. Structured as a series of discussions on religion and philosophy. Includes introduction, translation, and annotations.

This is the most thoughtful and intensive analysis of the emergence of a political machine of any written in recent years. McCaffery has mastered the theory and historiography of the political machine in general and applied this to a wealth of sources in Philadelphia. His questions are rigorously formulated, exhaustively researched, and convincingly stated.-Terrence J. McDonald, University of Michigan In 1903, Muckraker Lincoln Steffens brought the city of Philadelphia lasting notoriety as "the most corrupt and the most contented" urban center in the nation. Famous for its colorful "feudal barons," from "King James" McManes and his "Gas Ring" to "Iz" Durham and "Sunny Jim" McNichol, Philadelphia offers the historian a classic case of the duel between bosses and reformers for control of the American city. But, strangely enough, Philadelphia''s Republican machine has not been subject to critical examination until now. When Bosses Ruled Philadelphia challenges conventional wisdom on the political machine, which has it that party bosses controlled Philadelphia as early as the 1850s and maintained that control, with little change, until the Great Depression. According to Peter McCaffery, however, all bosses were not alike, and political power came only gradually over time. McManes''s "Gas Ring" in the 1870s was not as powerful as the well-oiled machine ushered in by Matt Quay in the late 1880s. Through a careful analysis of city records, McCaffery identifies the beneficiaries of the emerging Republican Organization, which sections of the local electorate supported it, and why. He concludes that genuine boss rule did not emerge as the dominant institution in Philadelphia politics until just before the turn of the century. McCaffery considers the function that the machine filled in the life of the city. Did it ultimately serve its supporters and the community as a whole, as Steffens and recent commentators have suggested? No, says McCaffery. The romantic image of the boss as "good guy" of the urban drama is wholly undeserved.

The story of a modern pilgrim's 500-mile walk from St. Jean Pied de Port in France, to Santiago de Compostela, thought to be the burial place of St James. Hoinacki's reflections range from the examination of religious sensibility to analyses of developments in architecture and technology.

Using a new analytic approach, which distinguishes between positive and negative sanctions and between specific and general sanctions, this book aims to demonstrate the importance of economic linkage and to explain the variety of forms it can take.

In The Building in the Text, Roy Eriksen shows that Renaissance writers conceived of their texts in accordance with architectural principles. His approach opens the way to wide-ranging discussions of the structure and meaning of a variety of literary texts and also provides new insights into the famed architectural ekphrases of Alberti and Vasari.Analyzing such words as "plot," "topos," "fabrica," and "stanza," Eriksen discloses the fundamental spatial symmetries and complexities in the writings of Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Milton, among other major figures. Ultimately, his book uncovers and clarifies a tradition of literary architecture that is rooted in antiquity and based on correspondences regarded as ordering principles of the cosmos. Eriksen''s book will be of interest to art historians, historians of literature, and those concerned with the classical heritage, rhetoric, music, and architecture.

A study of art, architecture and literature produced in Portugal and Cape Verde during the period 1933-1948. Documents artistic responses to images of the Portuguese nation promoted by the Salazar government's Office of State Propaganda. Examines the works of Jose de Almada Negreiros, Irene Lisboa, and Baltasar Lopes.

Designed to be a pragmatic approach, based on developments in argumentative theory, and analyzing appeal to expert opinion as a form of argument. The book identifies the requirements that make an appeal to expert opinion a reasonable or unreasonable argument.

This anthology connects recent debates in feminist theory to debates in traditional philosophical aesthetics. Among the topics covered are: gender totemism; the oppositional gaze in terms of the black female spectator; the interweaving of feminist frameworks; and the image of women in film.

This text focuses on the indispensable role of emotion, especially the faculty of empathy, in morality. It contends that moral conduct is severely threatened once empathy is prevented from taking part in an interplay with cognitive faculties in acts of moral perception and judgment.

This work is the story of an aspiring writer who failed and then, desperate for money, tried again and wrote himself out of penny-a-word pulp magazines and into a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. It is based upon Richter's letters, notebooks, journals and private papers.

A collection of essays that discuss the legal and constitutional debates over matters of policy throughout United States history.