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.
Making Arms in the Machine Age traces the growth and development of the United States Arsenal at Frankford, Pennsylvania, from its origin in 1816 to 1870. During this period, the arsenal evolved from a small post where skilled workers hand-produced small arms ammunition to a full-scale industrial complex employing a large civilian ......
Showing Lawrence's familiarity with biblical typology from both written and visual sources, Virginia Hyde explores its many ironic and paradoxical versions in his works. She demonstrates his use of typological precursors of Christ, such as Adam and David, Moses and Aaron, and his development of a coherent cosmology centered on the cross and the ......
The Galpin-Taylor Years in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 19191953
From 1919 through 1953, the U.S. Department of Agriculture housed the Division of Farm Population and Rural Life—the first unit within the federal government established specifically for sociological research. Distinguished sociologists Charles Galpin and Carl Taylor provided key leadership for 32 of its 34 years as the Division sought to ......
During the past century, literary education, often divorced from rhetoric, has grown increasingly distant from the practice of language in statecraft, law, religion, and ethics. Yet literature and rhetoric retain open, independent powers to enhance what Emerson calls "the conduct of life." In these provocative essays, James Engell ......
Hegel came to maturity as a philosopher during the first years of the nineteenth century, developing through prodigious intellectual struggles a highly original conception of dialectic as a method for rationally comprehending traumatic historical change. At the same time, he continued a process begun earlier, of critical engagement with the ......
A comprehensive study of the influence Spenser had on the forms, images, and style of the principal Romantic poets, this volume explores how Spenserianism pervades not just their writings but also the subconscious thinking and spirit of the Romantic era.
Edmund Spenser's tremendous popularity among the Romantics has always been ......
Despite Eduardo Manet's impressive accomplishments extending over half a century, this extraordinarily talented Cuban-French author remains relatively unknown in the United States. Phyllis Zatlin's book is the first to examine the multifaceted career of this dynamic bilingual writer.
George W. Atherton and the Land-Grant College Movement
The Origins of Federal Support for Higher Education revises the traditional interpretation of the land-grant college movement, whose institutions were brought into being by the 1862 Morrill Act to provide for "the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." Rather than being the inevitable consequence of the ......
The Church Rate Conflict in England and Wales 18521868
This book, covering the period 1832 to 1868, describes how the so-called "church rates" controversy contributed to the rise of a secular liberal state in England and Wales. The church rate was an ancient tax required of all ratepayers, regardless of denomination, for the upkeep of parish churches of the Church of England. This meant ......
