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.
How Nazi Persecution Shaped the Struggle for LGBTQ+ Rights
The Third Reich subjected some 100,000 individuals to a pernicious anti-homosexual campaign that included censorship, surveillance, medical experimentation, and death. Credible scholarship suggests that as many as 15,000 were interned in concentration camps, though the actual names and numbers of all those who suffered and died will never be ......
Examines a series of powerful artifacts traditionally associated with King Solomon, largely via extra-canonical textual sources--Solomon’s ring, bottles to contain evil forces, the so-called Solomon’s knot, a shamir, and a flying carpet--and traces their varying cultural resonances.
Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions
This book is an in-depth, comparative study of two of the most popular and influential intellectual and spiritual traditions of West Africa: Tijani Sufism and Ifa. Employing a unique methodological approach that thinks with and from—rather than merely about—these traditions, Oludamini Ogunnaike argues that they are, in fact, ......
Irene Eber is one of the foremost authorities on Jews in China during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—a field that, in contrast to the study of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the Americas, has been critically neglected. This volume gathers fourteen of Eber’s most salient articles and essays on the exchanges between ......
A selection and abridgment of Benjamin Foster's comprehensive, two-volume work on Babylonian and Assyrian literature, Before the Muses. This paperback edition is well-suited for college courses in Biblical Studies, Classical Studies, Religious Thought, Mythology, or Comparative Literature. Among the many compositions included are: Epic ......
The Creation of Humankind in Genesis 2:5-3:24 in Light of the mis pi, pit pi, and wpt-r Rituals of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt
Catherine McDowell presents a detailed and insightful analysis of the creation of adam in Gen 2:5–3:24 in light of the Mesopotamian mīs pî pīt pî (“washing of the mouth, opening of the mouth”) and the Egyptian wpt-r (opening of the mouth) rituals for the creation of a divine image. ......
A Collection of Mysterious and Invaluable Arts and Remedies, for Man as Well as Animals: Of Their Virtue and Efficacy in Healing Diseases, etc., the Greater Part of Which Was Never Published Until They Appeared in Print for the First Time in the U.S. in the Year 1820
Johann Georg Hohmans Long Lost Friend compiled practical uses of mysterious folk magic and rural home remedies rooted in medieval Europe. First published in America in 1820, these methods derive from Christian theology and shamanistic practices often credited to German immigrants. The chapbook exposes the spells, charms, benedictions, ......
Spanish Accounts of the Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada Expedition of Conquest
In early April 1536, Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada led a military expedition from the coastal city of Santa Marta deep into the interior of what is today modern Colombia. With roughly eight hundred Spaniards and numerous native carriers and black slaves, the Jiménez expedition was larger than the combined forces under Hernando ......
Conjuring Spirits contains both general surveys and analyses of magical texts and manuscripts by distinguished scholars in a variety of disciplines. Included are chapters by Richard Kieckhefer and Robert Mathiesen on the "Sworn Book of Honorius," Michael Camille on the Ars Notoria, John B. Friedman on the Secretum Philosophorum, Nicholas Watson ......
