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.
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Historians of the early Republic are just beginning to tell the stories of the period’s ethnic minorities. In Foreigners in Their Own Land, Steven M. Nolt is the first to add the story of the Pennsylvania Germans to that larger mosaic, showing how they came to think of themselves as quintessential Americans and simultaneously ......
A Contemporary Reconstruction of the Hegelian Problematic
This book undertakes a critical analysis of some central problems in Hegel scholarship. It is concerned with clarifying the theoretical underpinnings of paradox, the possible relationship of paradox to a dialectic logic, and the possibilities of systematization of dialectic and/or paradox. The author begins with a discussion of current ......
Crusaders were not the only Europeans drawn to the Holy Land during the twelfth century. Many lay people and followers of religious orders made pilgrimages to the East to visit the holy sites, and many felt compelled to stay there, settling as monks or hermits in established monasteries or founding hermitages of their own. So widespread was the ......
The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism
Politics and Transcendent Wisdom presents a systematic theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between politics and religion in a variety of contexts. This book examines the formation of "national protection" Buddhism in China and translates the key text of this important movement. Showing that Buddhist notions ......
Conrad Richter: A Writer's Life is the story of an aspiring writer who failed and then, desperate for money, tried again and wrote himself out of penny-a-word pulp magazines and into a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Based upon unrestricted access to all of Richter's letters, journals, notebooks, and private papers, this ......
George Palmer Putnam (1814–1872) was arguably the most important American publisher of the nineteenth century, a man fully and multiply involved in developments transforming all aspects of literary culture. In this comprehensive cultural biography, Ezra Greenspan offers a wide-ranging account of a rich, productive life lived in print, ......
Religion and Law in Colonial Rhode Island, 1638-1750
John Clarke and His Legacies is the first full-length biography of John Clarke (1609–76), a principal founder of colonial Rhode Island. Although Roger Williams usually gets most of the attention, Sydney James shows that Clarke made a lasting contribution to the colony—perhaps more so than Williams. Williams was the first ......
After the 1917 Revolution in Russia, the Bosheviks launched a massive assault on religion. Although we know a great deal about how the Bolsheviks went about doing this—propaganda, persecution of clergy and laity, seizing church property—scholars have not devoted much attention to the other side of the story: the people who were ......
In recent decades, the evidence for an oral epic tradition in ancient Greece has grown enormously along with our ever-increasing awareness of worldwide oral traditions. John Foley here examines the artistic implications that oral tradition holds for the understanding of the Iliad and Odyssey in order to establish a context for ......
