Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

A current grammar of Coptic (the last stage of the ancient Egyptian language) that includes material from all six of its major dialects. Includes a chrestomathy of readings in the six dialects as well as a dictionary.

A critical analysis of the art and career of African American painter Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998). Examines Jones's engagement with African and Afrodiasporic themes as well as the challenges she faced as a black woman artist.

Using an ecomaterialist conceptual framework, addresses interconnected stories from fiction, nonfiction, works of visual art, and physical sites in Italy and elsewhere.

Explores the rise of formalism in the visual arts. Employs an expanded sense of form to rethink a range of areas, including the history of writing about art, constructions of high and low culture, and the idea of global modernism.

A collection of essays on the work of Djuna Barnes, including her early journalism, poetry, prose, visual art, and drama.

A collection of essays exploring how fiction, life-writing, and comics portray illness, medical treatment, and disability.

A collection of essays exploring how fiction, life-writing, and comics portray illness, medical treatment, and disability.

Explores the history of the postmortem cesarean operation, which was performed in order to extract the fetus and save its soul through baptism. Examines accounts of the operation from across the Spanish empire in the eighteenth century.

Examines how the Spanish monarchy managed an empire of unprecedented linguistic diversity, making only sporadic efforts to propagate Spanish during the sixteenth century. Challenges the assumption that the pervasiveness of the Spanish language resulted from deliberate linguistic colonization.

Explores the sociogenesis and development of the French royal mistress, examining the careers of nine of the most significant holders of that title between 1444 and the final years of the ancien regime.

A collection of essays examining the contentious, dynamic, and ethically complicated relationship between race and religion in Judaism. Includes perspectives from the fields of history, philosophy, sociology, ethics, religious studies, law, psychology, literary studies, and theology.

Addresses the question of how and why Horace Walpole and the men of his circle promoted the Gothic style in art, architecture, and literature in the latter half of the eighteenth century.