Books published by Pennsylvania State University Press

Relates the story of a juvenile gorilla named Pongo, brought to Europe in 1876 and housed at the Unter den Linden Aquarium in Berlin. Examines human-animal interactions and science at a time when the theory of evolution was first gaining ground.

Presents a reconstruction of the history of Ancient Israel in biblical times, taking into account biblical and extra-biblical texts as well as archaeological material.

An application of functional linguistic theory to the book of Judges in order to evaluate the characters and their actions in their historical context and determine whether their actions are normative or aberrant based on evidence in the text itself.

Examines how the gulf in interpretive priorities between ancient and modern readers has been exaggerated, and argues that careful study of early Christian reading practices suggests possibilities for re-contextualizing 'ruled reading' for a postmodern setting.

Recounts events surrounding the recovery, in 2017, of a sixteenth-century biographical manuscript by Luis de Carvajal the Younger, a crypto-Jew executed by the Inquisition in colonial Mexico.

A collection of essays exploring the polemical encounters in the fields of religion and culture that took place among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula between the late Middle Ages and the seventeenth century.

A short introduction to the study of Akkadian literature from ancient Babylonia and Assyria, encompassing some two thousand years of literary history of the ancient Middle East.

A collection of translations and images for ninety-two Old Babylonian tablets and fragments, which have in common a context in pedagogy, being products of Old Babylonian schools. These are divided into two groups: school letters and school legal texts.

An examination of Rufus Porter, an enigmatic but astonishingly productive American artist, inventor, and publisher. Presents his life and work in the context of the cultural, social, and technological networks that shaped innovation and democracy during the antebellum era.

An anthology of works by nineteenth-century French poet Paul Verlaine, presenting both the French texts and new translations and setting the poems in the context of Verlaine's troubled life and his literary development.

A study of romance, religion, and politics in seventeenth-century England, presenting a recontextualized understanding of romance as a multi-generic narrative structure or strategy rather than a prose genre.

Examines how the popular musician and public figure Bono represents the power of evangelicalism and promotes a religion of neoliberal capitalism.