Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

Examines the work of artists trained at the Viennese Women's Academy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Explores generational struggles and diverging artistic philosophies on art, craft, and design.

A reexamination of the career of Titian, the only Renaissance artist credited by contemporaries with painting a miracle-working image. Argues that a major part of the artist's legacy is to be found in his charismatic entrance into the tradition of Christian icon painting.

Explores the career of Hungarian-born French painter Simon Hantai (1922-2008) from his earliest paintings and writings in France in the 1950s through his final abstractions of the 2000s.

Explores the theme of race in nineteenth-century transatlantic culture, focusing on how American concepts of race were intertwined with the ongoing cultural exchanges that Americans had with European artistic traditions.

Examines Gothic architecture and the visual and cultural significance of the adoption of externalized buttressing systems in twelfth-century France. Demonstrates how buttressing frames operated as sites of display, points of transition, and mechanisms of demarcation.

Examines the theoretical framing of "nature" in South Africa and beyond. Analyzes myths and fantasies that have brought the world to a point of climate catastrophe and continue to shape the narratives through which it is understood.

A graphic novel depicting the stories of women who fought with the National Liberation Front in the Algerian War of Independence.

A collection of essays exploring how biocultural and literary dynamics acted together to shape conceptions of sleep states in the early modern period. Essays envision sleep states as a means of defining the human, both literally and metaphorically.

Explores the relationship between people, street animals, and rabies in urban India. Incorporates epidemiological goals within anthropological frameworks to investigate the ways in which people come into contact with animals and create favorable conditions for the rabies virus to flourish.

Examines the concept of metanoia as both a rhetorical figure of speech and a critical tool for the analysis of self-reinventions of all kinds, including conversions related to race, sex, religion, and politics.

Surveys the many different impacts of Ciceronian theories on a diverse array of texts and authors between 1100 and 1550, presenting a counternarrative to the widely accepted belief in the dominance of Aristotelianism in early European political and social thought.

A study of the ladies' garment industry in northeastern Pennsylvania between 1945 and 1995, featuring sixteen selected oral histories conducted with workers, shop owners, and others with knowledge of the industry.

A study of the ladies' garment industry in northeastern Pennsylvania between 1945 and 1995, featuring sixteen selected oral histories conducted with workers, shop owners, and others with knowledge of the industry.

Advances the hypothesis that the ninth-century illustrations in the Utrecht Psalter reflect a late antique illustrated Hebrew version of the psalms, a departure from the commonly accepted view of the origin of the Utrecht images.

This volume brings together the work of scholars using various methodologies to investigate the prevalence, importance, and meanings of feasting and foodways in the texts and cultural-material environments of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East. Thus, it serves as both an introduction to and explication of this emerging field. The offerings range from the third-millennium Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia to the rise of a new cuisine in the Islamic period and transverse geographical locations such as southern Iraq, Syria, the Aegean, and especially the southern Levant. The strength of this collection lies in the many disciplines and methodologies that come together. Texts, pottery, faunal studies, iconography, and anthropological theory are all accorded a place at the table in locating the importance of feasting as a symbolic, social, and political practice. Various essays showcase both new archaeological methodologies?zooarchaeological bone analysis and spatial analysis?and classical methods such as iconographic studies, ceramic chronology, cultural anthropology, and composition-critical textual analysis.

A visual survey of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris over the past 850 years. Addresses a series of key themes in the cathedral's history, including the fundraising campaign, the construction of vaults, and the liturgical function of the choir.

Illustrates how the discovery of electromagnetism in 1820 not only led to technological inventions, such as the dynamo and the telegraph, but also legitimized modes of reasoning that manifested a sharper ability to perceive how metonymic relations could reveal the order of things.

Christian interpreters have struggled with the story of Ezra 9–10 for many reasons. Its apparent legalism and racism, as well as its advocacy of divorce as a solution for intermarriage, is unacceptable for many Christians, yet this incident is presented in implicitly positive terms, and the narrative forms a part of Scripture. What then should a Christian reader make of such a story, not least from the vantage point of the NT?The troubling aspects of the incident are considered in Part I through a detailed exegesis outlining the exiles’ legal reasoning, rooted in pentateuchal laws. Part II then discusses questions of a broader hermeneutical framework. Saysell suggests that prior Christian assumptions, such as the combination of scriptural authority and the primacy of narrative in interpretation, can lead to an unhelpful way of reading stories that takes them as examples to follow/avoid rather than invites engagement for the renewing of the mind (Rom 12:1–2). One also needs to consider how such a difficult question as intermarriage is handled in the rest of the canon (and in tradition), which put into perspective the solution offered and constrains the meaning of the primary text. Specifically, “the holy seed” rationale (Ezra 9:2), which gives rise to the charge of racism, is shown to have flourished briefly in the Second Temple Period but proved to be a dead end in the long run. A comparison with the NT treatment of a specific intermarriage crisis in 1 Cor 7:12–16, as well as with other, present-day solutions, can highlight what went wrong in the exilic reasoning and yet what constructive challenge the text as Scripture may hold for the Christian reader.

The Babylonian flood story of Atra-hasis is of vital importance to ancient Near Eastern and biblical scholars, as well as students of history, anthropology, and comparative religion. Professors Lambert and Millard provide the reader with a detailed introduction, transliterated Akkadian with English translation, critical notes, and line drawings of the cuneiform tablets.The epic opens in a time when only the gods lived in the universe. Having decided on their established spheres of influence, the chief Mesopotamian gods—Anu, Enlil, and Enki—began their divine labors. In a joint effort, Enki and Mami (the mother goddess) engineered the creation of mankind from clay and the flesh and blood of a slain god. The remainder of the story recounts the expansion of humanity, the consequent irritation of Enki by this expansion, the attempt by Enki and Enlil to destroy humankind through a great flood, and the escape from the flood by Atra-hasis in a boat, accompanied by his possessions, family, and animals.This classic scholarly edition of the epic is once again made available as a quality Eisenbrauns reprint.