Founded in 1956, Penn State University Press publishes rigorously reviewed, high-quality works of scholarship and books of regional and contemporary interest, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The publishing arm of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries, the Press promotes the advance of scholarship by disseminating knowledge—new information, interpretations, methods of analysis—widely in books, journals, and digital publications.
Scholarly publishing has faced monumental challenges over the past few decades. The Press takes its place among those institutions moving the enterprise forward. Its innovative projects continue to identify and embrace the technological advances and business models that ensure scholarly publishing will remain feasible, and widely accessible, well into the future.
The pseudonymous works Kierkegaard wrote during the period 1843–46 have been responsible for establishing his reputation as an important philosophical thinker, but for Kierkegaard himself, they were merely preparatory for what he saw as the primary task of his authorship: to elucidate the meaning of what it is to live as a Christian and ......
Questions about the relevance and value of various liberal concepts are at the heart of important debates among feminist philosophers and social theorists. Although many feminists invoke concepts such as rights, equality, autonomy, and freedom in arguments for liberation, some attempt to avoid them, noting that they can also reinforce and ......
The Mahāratnakūta Sūtra is one of the five major sutra groups in the Mahāyāna canon. Of the two great schools of Buddhism, Mahāyāna has the greatest number of adherents worldwide—it prevails among the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Tibetans, and Vietnamese—and contains within it a number of movements, ......
History and Painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis
Picturing Kingship presents the first comprehensive art-historical study of the personal prayerbook of King Louis IX. The book approaches the St. Louis Psalter through a rich range of perspectives and methodologies and positions it within the contexts of its production and use. Not only is the manuscript’s production and ......
Samuel Seymour, Titian Ramsay Peale, and the Art of the Long Expedition, 1818-1823
Picking up where Lewis and Clark had left off, the Long Expedition of 1819–20 was the first federally sponsored exploratory expedition that was accompanied by professional artists. Under the command of Major Stephen Harriman Long, artists Samuel Seymour, a Philadelphia landscape painter, and Titian Ramsay Peale, a natural historian and ......
Cézanne’s Bathers: Biography and the Erotics of Paint discusses an epochal shift in the representation of sexuality in modern art with the images of nudes made by Paul Cézanne. Cézanne was the first painter of the twentieth century who, through careful study of avant-garde precedents including Manet and Courbet, ......
An Athlete's Journey Through the Sixties to the Age of Academic Capitalism
With a Foreword by Ara ParseghianThe debate over big-time college sports, never far from the front pages, has once again moved from simmering to hot. Congress has been investigating the tax-exempt status of the NCAA in part because of questions about how commercialized college sports contribute to educational values. Athletes are challenging ......
Examines the life of 18th century German immigrant and businessman Caspar Wistar. Reevaluates the modern understanding of the entrepreneurial ideal and the immigrant experience in the colonial era.