Search results for ""pennsylvania state university press""
Pennsylvania State University Press Ur in the Twenty-First Century CE: Proceedings of the 62nd Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Philadelphia, July 11–15, 2016
The city of Ur—now modern Tell el-Muqayyar in southern Iraq, also called Ur of the Chaldees in the Bible—was one of the most important Sumerian cities in Mesopotamia during the Early Dynastic Period in the first half of the third millennium BCE. The city is known for its impressive wealth and artistic achievements, evidenced by the richly decorated objects found in the so-called Royal Cemetery, which was excavated by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania from 1922 until 1934. Ur was also the cult center of the moon god, and during the twenty-first century BCE, it was the capital of southern Mesopotamia.With contributions from both established and rising Assyriologists from ten countries and edited by three leading scholars of Assyriology, this volume presents thirty-two essays based on papers delivered at the 62nd Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale held in Philadelphia in 2016. Reflecting on the theme “Ur in the Twenty-First Century CE,” the chapters deal with archaeological, artistic, cultural, economic, historical, and textual matters connected to the ancient city of Ur. Three of the chapters are based on plenary lectures by senior scholars Richard Zettler, Jonathan Taylor, and Katrien De Graef. The remainder of the essays, arranged alphabetically by author, highlight innovative new directions for research and represent a diverse array of topics related to Ur in various periods of Mesopotamian history. Tightly focused in theme, yet broad in scope, this collection will be of interest to Assyriologists and archaeologists working on Iraq.
£98.06
Pennsylvania State University Press The Royal Inscriptions of Amēl-Marduk (561–560 BC), Neriglissar (559–556 BC), and Nabonidus (555–539 BC), Kings of Babylon
Amēl-Marduk (561–560 BC), Neriglissar (559–556 BC), and Nabonidus (555–539 BC) were the last native kings of Babylon. In this modern scholarly edition of the complete extant corpus of royal inscriptions from each of their reigns, Frauke Weiershäuser and Jamie Novotny provide updated and reliable editions of the texts.The kings of the Neo-Babylonian Empire left hundreds of official inscriptions on objects such as clay cylinders, bricks, paving stones, vases, and stelae. These writings, ranging from lengthy narratives enumerating the deeds of a monarch to labels identifying a ruler as the builder of a given structure, supplement and inform our understanding of the empire. Beginning with a historical introduction to the reigns of these three kings and the corpus of inscriptions, Weiershäuser and Novotny then present each text with an introduction, a photograph of the inscribed object, the Akkadian text in a newly collated transliteration, an English translation, catalogue data, commentary, and an updated bibliography. Additionally, Weiershäuser and Novotny provide new translations of several related Akkadian texts and chronicles.Featuring meticulous yet readable transliterations and translations that have been carefully collated with the originals, this book will be the standard edition for scholars and students of Assyriology, the Neo-Babylonian dialect, and the Neo-Babylonian Empire for decades to come.
£72.86
Pennsylvania State University Press Good Girls Go to Hell
This was the last day I prayed.A coming-of-age graphic memoir set in the West Bank, Good Girls Go to Hell depicts the reality of growing up in a region split by religious tensions—and sometimes violent conflict.From political protests to personal struggles with school, body image, and relationships with family and friends, Tohar Sherman-Friedman’s life is an inspiring story of conflicting convictions, rebellion, and personal growth. Tohar recounts her experience as the youngest of seven children in a conservative Jewish family, navigating a life buffeted by high expectations for school performance and religious adherence at home and tense conflict in the world outside. With utter sincerity and through detailed panel-style drawing, she relates what it’s like to be on a journey that ultimately takes her far from how she was taught to think and what she was expected to believe.
£24.95
Pennsylvania State University Press The Pass
The only way out is through.Camille and Bastien are overjoyed at the birth of their second child. But their happiness is short-lived. Soon after Louis is born, he is diagnosed with severe heart defects. Because of his young age, he must wait for surgery—and the operation itself could prove fatal.During the tense and bewildering months that follow Louis’s diagnosis, his parents find some comfort in Camille’s father, Pablo, who comes to help care for the children. The long wait turns into a joyful interlude of games, tenderness, and deepening love between Louis and Pablo, an experience that will remain forever engraved in their lives.Inspired by real events, this emotionally engaging follow-up to Espé’s The Parakeet continues the story of Bastien, now a father, as he and Camille cope with every parent’s biggest fear: that they could lose their child.
£18.95
Pennsylvania State University Press I Don’t Want to Be a Mom
What does choice really mean for a woman?In I Don’t Want to Be a Mom, Irene Olmo recounts her coming-of-age transformation from assuming she will one day start a family to realizing that she just doesn’t want to be a mom. With an affecting mix of humor and introspection, she describes the subtle and not-so-subtle ways she was pressured to have children and the feelings of isolation and self-doubt that ensued. Her delightful full-color illustrations capture perfectly the maddeningly narrow-minded reactions of those around her as well as her own discomfort and frustration.A true story of liberation and self-empowerment in the face of societal prejudice, I Don’t Want to Be a Mom questions the imposition of motherhood on women as both an expectation and a path toward fulfillment. It shows us that "choice" has more than one dimension and that, ultimately, some questions in life are more complicated than they seem.
£16.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Menopause: A Comic Treatment
Hot flashes. Vaginal atrophy. Social stigma. The comics in this unapologetic anthology prove that when it comes to menopause and its attendant symptoms, no one needs to sweat it alone. Featuring works by comics luminaries such as Lynda Barry, Joyce Farmer, Ellen Forney, and Carol Tyler, Menopause is the perfect antidote to the simplistic, cheap-joke approach that treats menopause as a cultural taboo. This anthology challenges stereotypes with perspectives from a range of life experiences, ages, gender identities, ethnicities, and health conditions. Other contributors include Maureen Burdock, Jennifer Camper, KC Councilor, MK Czerwiec, Leslie Ewing, Ann M. Fox, Keet Geniza, Roberta Gregory, Teva Harrison, Rachael House, Leah Jones, Monica Lalanda, Cathy Leamy, Ajuan Mance, Jessica Moran, Mimi Pond, Sharon Rosenzweig, Joyce Schachter, Susan Merrill Squier, Emily Steinberg, Nicola Streeten, A. K. Summers, Kimiko Tobimatsu, Shelley L. Wall, and Dana Walrath.
£24.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Jacob Kaplan’s Excavations of Protohistoric Sites, 1950s-1980s
Jacob Kaplan was a dynamic field archaeologist and an original researcher of the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in the Levant. This volume contains a selection of Kaplan's unpublished fieldwork as well as a broad survey of the thoughts, theories, and considerations that have placed his work at the forefront of Israeli archaeology.Kaplan played an important role in shaping the archaeological sequence of the late prehistory of Israel, especially due to his discovery and description in the early 1950s of the Wadi Rabah culture—a major entity in the late Pottery Neolithic period. On a broader scale, Kaplan incorporated the Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Israel into the sequences of the late prehistory of the Levant and touched on the question of the end of the Neolithic period—one of the most intensive, creative, and transformative eras in human history. His views on some of the basic chronological and cultural issues of these periods endure to this very day. This two-volume collection accords Kaplan the full recognition he deserves as an original, leading investigator of the late prehistory of Israel.
£144.85
Pennsylvania State University Press The Earth Is the Lord’s: Essays on Creation and the Bible in Honor of Ben C. Ollenburger
Compiled in honor of esteemed teacher and scholar Ben C. Ollenburger, The Earth Is the Lord’s brings together a diverse group of scholars with specializations across the Christian canon to address creation in the Bible, God as Creator, and God’s relationship with creation.The essays in this volume cover topics ranging from creation theology, the symbolic devastation and renewal of land, cycles of creation, creation and peace, and the covenant as the purpose of creation. Moreover, while previous studies on this topic have focused almost exclusively on the Hebrew Bible, the current volume gives equal weight to the New Testament as a vital source for approaching the Bible’s theologies of creation.The Earth Is the Lord’s advances the scholarly and ecclesial conversations surrounding creation and will be an indispensable resource for biblical studies scholars, seminary students, and Christian congregational leaders and teachers.In addition to the editors, the contributors are Walter Brueggemann, Andrea Dalton Saner, Theodore Hiebert, Loren L. Johns, Safwat Marzouk, David Rensberger, Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, Willard Swartley, Patricia K. Tull, Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld, and Gordon Zerbe.
£40.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Tell el-Borg II: Excavations in North Sinai
This is the second and final volume of scientific and interdisciplinary reports on the excavations and research conducted at Tell el-Borg, north Sinai, between 1998 and 2008, written by the scholars and specialists who worked on the site under the direction of Professor James K. Hoffmeier.This volume focuses on the cemetery areas, which yield more than a dozen tombs, typically made of mud brick, some of which were constructed for a single occupant and some of which were larger tombs that accommodated multiple family members. Included is a treatment of an area of “public” space featuring a temple and a well, among other things, and a study of the geological results of the nearby ancient Ballah Lakes that offers new data on the history of the Nile distributary that flowed by Tell el-Borg. The balance of the work deals with specialty reports, including the faunal and botanical remains, the clay coffins, and elite stones. A concluding chapter offers a synthesis of the decade of work and ties together the finds published in both volumes.In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Stephen Moshier, Bahaa Gayed, Gregory D. Mumford, Scott D. Haddow, Mark Janzen, Thomas W. Davis, Rexine Hummel, Hesham M. Hussein, Carole McCartney, Michelle A. Loyet, Louise Bertini, and Salima Ikram.
£83.66
Pennsylvania State University Press Numayra: Excavations at the Early Bronze Age Townsite in Jordan, 1977–1983
The emergence of ancient urbanism has long held the interest of archaeologists attempting to understand the origins of inequality and its links to early urban life. This volume presents the results of archeological research at the Early Bronze Age sites of Numayra and Ras an-Numayra, conducted to investigate the rise of Early Bronze Age urban society, with a distinctive focus on links between environmental and social systems.The Dead Sea Plain excavations at Numayra and Ras an-Numayra uncovered extraordinarily well-preserved architecture, artifacts, and faunal and paleoethnobotanical remains that offer exciting and profound insights that enhance our understanding of life in these walled settlements. Under the codirection of R. Thomas Schaub and Walter E. Rast, the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain team designed their research with an explicitly anthropological focus, based on the New Archaeology’s principles for archaeological knowledge production. Their excavations at these sites in the mid-1970s and early 1980s heralded the now-common approach combining archaeology, paleoethnobotany, palynology, bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, geology, and ethnoarchaeology into the research project, with a multidisciplinary team in the field to systematize collection and sampling procedures.These excavations at Numayra and Ras an-Numayra represent a watershed moment in the history of archaeological research in the southern Levant, setting new standards for scientific methods and a multidisciplinary approach to investigating the past.
£150.26
Pennsylvania State University Press Middle Egyptian
This grammar provides a comprehensive overview of Middle Egyptian and illustrates its grammatical features with extensive examples from various sources. Exercises at the end of each chapter, along with a sign list and a hieroglyphic word list, provide the reader with the means to apply and practice the content, enabling this book to be used as both a grammar reference and a textbook.The book’s structure and detailed outline facilitate its use as a reference, making it easy to find information on any particular grammatical feature. At the same time, the extensive content of the forty chapters provides a suitable basis for self-guided study and enables the student to read and understand Egyptian inscriptions and literary texts in hieroglyphic transliteration. Recent developments in the understanding of Egyptian are exemplified in numerous quotations from Egyptian texts, and exercises at the end of each chapter provide further opportunity for considering the grammatical phenomena discussed in the chapter, allowing for both practice and review. For reasons of convenience, the vocabulary necessary for the exercises, along with the words used in the examples, are arranged into a word list at the end of the book. Similar and alternative grammatical constructions are compared, and in addition to the “classical” language of the Middle Kingdom, the book considers both Old Egyptian and Late Egyptian influences. As a hybrid reference and textbook, this volume introduces the reader to the grammatical features of Middle Egyptian and illustrates the means of expression used in ancient Egyptian.
£76.46
Pennsylvania State University Press The Unfolding of Your Words Gives Light: Studies on Biblical Hebrew in Honor of George L. Klein
This collection of essays, covering nearly every aspect of Biblical Hebrew studies, testifies to the invigorating joy of studying that language—a joy that is richly exemplified in the life of the volume’s honoree, George Klein.Paying tribute to a colleague who has devoted his academic career to teaching Biblical Hebrew, this book presents fresh explorations of topics related to Biblical Hebrew linguistics. The opening chapters explore grammatical issues and delve into matters of diachrony. Subsequent essays address significant syntactical constructions, such as “at the end of days,” and matters of lexicography. The final two chapters address issues of pedagogy, including a call to comprehensively rethink how to teach Biblical Hebrew according to linguistic principles. Researchers, teachers, and students of Hebrew alike will benefit greatly from consulting the essays in this volume.Distinctive for its diverse content, this volume features contributions from an international cohort of academics, including Scott N. Callaham, Stephen Dempster, Stephen A. Geller, Holger Gzella, N. Blake Hearson, Ernst Jenni, Ethan C. Jones, Tracy McKenzie, Eugene H. Merrill, Alviero Niccacci, Perry J. Oakes, Mark F. Rooker, Richard A. Taylor, Heath A. Thomas, and Gary R. Williams.
£49.46
Pennsylvania State University Press A Glossary of Old Syrian: Volume 1: ʔ – ḳ
A Glossary of Old Syrian: ʔ – ḳ is the first of two volumes aimed at the completion of a lexicographical index of the Old Syrian linguistical continuum. This glossary gives a picture, or map, of the Old Syrian lexicon as it can be extracted and reconstructed from the available sources, from the (Old Akkadian-)Eblatic through the Old and Middle Babylonian corpora.Old Syrian can be defined most appropriately as a diachronically conservative, geographically pluricentric, and pragmatically multilayered linguistic cluster. Therefore, the present work pays special attention to the distribution of lexical data along diatopic and diastratic criteria. In view of the enormous amount of material and the dispersion of the data, this glossary focuses on the most representative textual corpora of the Old Syrian linguistic landscape. The bibliographical references are kept deliberately succinct and as a rule, restricted to the classic works that may be easily found in every Assyriological or Semitic library, public or private, and that will redirect the users to their sources. Since the Old Syrian lexicography remains uncertain, the leading interpretative opinions are included alongside the most relevant comparative Semitic material. A Glossary of Old Syrian offers a clear picture of the current state of this field and is intended to serve as a reference work in support of future study.
£89.06
Pennsylvania State University Press Tel Miqne 9/2: The Iron Age IIC: Late Philistine City
This well-illustrated volume presents the evidence from Stratum Pre-IC of the end of the 8th century, from Strata IC and IB of the 7th century, when Ekron achieved the zenith of its physical growth and prosperity, and from Stratum IA, the final Iron Age IIC phase of the early 6th century BCE. It offers a detailed discussion of the Iron Age IIC occupational history; a comprehensive analysis of the ceramic assemblages; a quantitative analysis of the pottery from the main Stratum IB buildings; and studies on vessel capacity, ceramic, lithic, ivory, and metal objects, jewelry, scarabs, faunal remains, and fish bones.Published under the auspices of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, this volume concludes the publication of the results of the nine seasons of excavation conducted in Field IV Lower between 1985 and 1995, directed by Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin and sponsored by the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Companion volumes published in 2016:—Field IV Lower—The Elite Zone, Part 1: The Iron Age I Early Philistine City by Trude Dothan, Yosef Garfinkel and Seymour Gitin;—Part 3A: The Iron Age I and IIC Early and Late Philistine Cities Database (see links tab);—Part 3B: The Iron Age I and IIC Early and Late Philistine Cities Plans and SectionsThe final reports on the two large Iron Age I and IIC Philistines cities in Field IV Lower offer a comprehensive view of the history of Ekron from its initial establishment and development in the Iron Age I until its destruction in the late Iron Age II. The searchable database and print version of the sections and plans provide a unique opportunity for readers to access and evaluate the excavators’ observations and conclusions.
£80.06
Pennsylvania State University Press Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Held at Ghent, Belgium, 15–19 July 2013
Mesopotamia is often considered to be the birthplace of law codes. In recognition of this fact and motivated by the perennial interest in the topic among Assyriologists, the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale was organized in Ghent in 2013 around the theme “Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East.” Based on papers delivered at that meeting, this volume contains twenty-six essays that focus on archaeological, philological, and historical topics related to order and chaos in the Ancient Near East. Written by a diverse array of international scholars, the contributions to this book explore laws and legal practices in the Ur III, Old Babylonian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo-Assyrian periods in Mesopotamia, as well as in Nuzi and the Hebrew Bible. Among the subjects covered are the Code of Hammurabi, legal phraseology, the archaeological traces of the organization of community life, and biblical law. The volume also contains essays that explore the concepts of chaos/disorder and law/order in divinatory texts and literature.Wide-ranging and cutting-edge, the essays in this collection will be of interest to Assyriologists, especially members of the International Association for Assyriology.
£120.56
Pennsylvania State University Press First Isaiah and the Disappearance of the Gods
Isaiah 1–39 uses the unique term אלילים—usually translated as “idols”— more than anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Using this linguistic phenomenon as a point of departure, Matthew J. Lynch reexamines the rhetorical strategies of First Isaiah, revealing a stronger monotheizing rhetoric than previously recognized.Standard accounts of Israelite religion frequently insist that monotheism reached its apex during the exile, and especially in Deutero-Isaiah. By contrast, Lynch’s study brings to light an equally potent mode of monotheizing in First Isaiah. Lynch identifies three related rhetorical tendencies that emphasize yhwh’s supreme uniqueness: a rhetoric of avoidance, referring to other deities as idols (אלילים) to avoid conferring on them the status of gods (אלוהים); a rhetoric of exaltation, emphasizing yhwh’s truly exalted status in opposition to all that which exalted itself; and a rhetoric of abasement, fully subjugating all other claimants to absolute power—whether human or divine—before the divine king.Succinctly and persuasively argued, Lynch’s book will change how biblical scholars understand the nature and development of Israelite monotheism.
£33.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Studying Gender in the Ancient Near East
This volume explores how the interpretation of material from the ancient Near East is enriched through the application of diverse methodological and theoretical approaches to studying gender. The contributors to this collection include both established and up-and-coming scholars whose work brings gender studies theories—from Butler’s theory of gender as a performance to more recent theories that consider gender as a spectrum—to bear on varied materials and contexts. Their essays increase the visibility of women in ancient history, untangle constructions of masculinity and femininity in diverse contexts, and grapple with big-picture questions, such as the suitability of applying third-wave or postfeminist theories to the ancient Near East. Studying Gender in the Ancient Near East points to a need for—and provides a model of—a more productive agenda for gender studies in furthering our understanding of ancient Near Eastern societies. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Julia M. Asher-Greve, Stephanie Lynn Budin, Megan Cifarelli, M. Érica Couto-Ferreira, Amy Rebecca Gansell, Katrien De Graef, Amélie Kuhrt, Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper, Brigitte Lion, Natalie N. May, Beth Alpert Nakhai, Martti Nissinen, Omar N’Shea, María Rosa Oliver, Frances Pinnock, Eleonora Ravenna, Allison Karmel Thomason, Luciana Urbano, Niek Veldhuis, and Ilona Zsolnay.
£93.56
Pennsylvania State University Press Middle Babylonian Texts in the Cornell Collections, Part II: The Earlier Kings
This volume completes the publication of Middle Babylonian texts from the Rosen Collection that date to the Kassite period, a project that was initiated by Wilfred H. van Soldt with CUSAS 30 in 2015. In this book, Elena Devecchi provides full transliterations, translations, and extended commentaries of 338 previously unpublished cuneiform tablets from Kassite Babylonia (ca. 1475–1155 BCE). Most of the texts are dated to the reigns of Nazi-Maruttaš and Kadašman-Turgu, but the collection also includes one tablet dating to the reign of Burna-Buriaš II and a few documents from the reigns of Kadašman-Enlil II, Kudur-Enlil, and Šagarakti-Šuriaš, as well as some that are not dated. The tablets published here are largely administrative records dealing with the income, storage, and redistribution of agricultural products and byproducts, animal husbandry, and textile production, while legal documents and letters comprise a smaller portion of the collection. Evidence suggests that these documents originated from an administrative center that interacted closely with the provincial capital Nippur and must have been located in its vicinity. They thus expand significantly our previous knowledge of the Nippur region under Kassite rule, hitherto almost exclusively based on sources that came from Nippur itself, and provide substantial new data for the study of central aspects of society, economy, and administration that traditionally lie at the core of research about Kassite Babylonia.
£83.66
Pennsylvania State University Press Trees and Kings: A Comparative Analysis of Tree Imagery in Israel’s Prophetic Tradition and the Ancient Near East
The Old Testament prophets did not hesitate to use the rhetorical conventions accessible to them when delivering their sermons of salvation and judgment. One source of comparison used frequently in the prophets and widely throughout the ancient Near East is the image of a tree. In Trees and Kings, William Osborne evaluates the cultural and cognitive setting that potentially gave rise to this figurative tree imagery, drawing on both comparative study with ancient Near Eastern tree imagery and the cognitive-linguistic approach to metaphor theory.Osborne examines tree metaphors that appear in the texts of Israel's writing prophets, specifically Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. He takes this material as largely reflective of the Israelite prophetic tradition from the 8th–6th centuries BC. Tree imagery in the Old Testament is certainly not limited to these prophetic books, and this study takes many of these texts into consideration in seeking to understand tree imagery in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel better. The question is rarely asked, why do the prophets often defer to the metaphorical use of the tree? The goal of this study is to answer this important question by comparing and contrasting tree metaphors in much of the prophetic literature of the Old Testament with tree imagery and metaphors encountered from the ancient Near East.
£37.95
Pennsylvania State University Press From Mari to Jerusalem and Back: Assyriological and Biblical Studies in Honor of Jack Murad Sasson
Jack Murad Sasson, distinguished scholar of the ancient Near East, has enjoyed a long career studying the cultures, languages, and literatures of that consequential region. His many books and articles span a seemingly endless array of topics and materials. Foremost are his in-depth analyses of the Syrian city of Mari and its remarkable heritage. Of comparable importance are his definitive studies of the Hebrew Bible, in particular his commentaries on the books of Judges, Ruth, and Jonah. In addition, the encyclopedic four-volume set he initiated and edited, Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, stands out as an exceptional contribution to peers, students, and the general public.To honor him and his scholarly achievements, thirty-five of his longtime colleagues and friends have collaborated to produce this volume of essays on such diverse cultures as Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, the Amorites, Egypt, Ebla, the Hurrians, the Hittites, Ugarit, the Arameans, Canaan, and Israel. The studies in this volume display the richness of these cultures—their literary legacies, languages, political and social histories, material remains, religions and rituals, and history of ideas—as well as their reception in modern times. The volume is both a contribution to the evolving study of the ancient Near East and also a fitting tribute to Jack Sasson, whose friendship and scholarship we have long cherished and esteemed.
£84.56
Pennsylvania State University Press Ashkelon 8: The Islamic and Crusader Periods
This eighth installment in the series of Final Reports of The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon presents a synthetic study of the remains dating to the seventh through the twelfth centuries. Bringing together contributions from specialists on architecture, fortifications, ceramics, small finds, and organic remains, Ashkelon 8 opens a window onto everyday life during a period when Ashkelon was one of the most important cities in the southern Levant.The first chapters survey the city’s architecture and fortifications, including a detailed analysis of the history of Ashkelon’s walls. The copiously illustrated chapters on ceramics cover both local and imported goods, including an unparalleled collection of Chinese ceramics. Essays on glass, metals, and coins shed light on the economy and trade practices, while the chapters on organic material provide valuable insight into the site and serve as a model for similar studies at Islamic- and Crusader-period sites throughout the Levant. Together these studies detail daily life, reconstruct vast trade networks, and illuminate cultural events previously known only from textual sources. Based on thirty years of work in more than two dozen areas of excavation, Ashkelon 8 is an essential resource for scholars investigating the history and archaeology of the Islamic and Crusader periods in Ashkelon.
£120.56
Pennsylvania State University Press Reconstructing Jerusalem: Persian-Period Prophetic Perspectives
Jerusalem—one of the most contested sites in the world. Reconstructing Jerusalem takes readers back to a pivotal moment in its history when it lay ruined and abandoned and the glory of its ancient kings, David and Solomon, had faded. Why did this city not share the same fate as so many other conquered cities, destroyed and forever abandoned, never to be rebuilt? Why did Jerusalem, disgraced and humiliated, not suffer the fate of Babylon, Nineveh, or Persepolis? Reconstructing Jerusalem explores the interrelationship of the physical and intellectual processes leading to Jerusalem’s restoration after its destruction in 587 B.C.E., stressing its symbolic importance and the power of the prophetic perspective in the preservation of the Judean nation and the critical transition from Yahwism to Judaism. Through texts and artifacts, including a unique, comprehensive investigation of the archaeological evidence, a startling story emerges: the visions of a small group of prophets not only inspired the rebuilding of a desolate city but also of a dispersed people. Archaeological, historical, and literary analysis converge to reveal the powerful elements of the story, a story of dispersion and destruction but also of re-creation and revitalization, a story about how compelling visions can change the fate of a people and the course of human history, a story of a community reborn to a barren city.
£54.86
Pennsylvania State University Press A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew
Volume 1: Periods, Corpora, and Reading Traditions; Volume 2: Selected TextsBiblical Hebrew is studied worldwide by university students, seminarians, and the educated public. It is also studied, almost universally, through a single prism—that of the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, which is the best attested and most widely available tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Thanks in large part to its endorsement by Maimonides, it also became the most prestigious vocalization tradition in the Middle Ages. For most, Biblical Hebrew is synonymous with Tiberian Biblical Hebrew.There are, however, other vocalization traditions. The Babylonian tradition was widespread among Jews around the close of the first millennium CE; the tenth-century Karaite scholar al-Qirqisani reports that the Babylonian pronunciation was in use in Babylonia, Iran, the Arabian peninsula, and Yemen. And despite the fact that Yemenite Jews continued using Babylonian manuscripts without interruption from generation to generation, European scholars learned of them only toward the middle of the nineteenth century. Decades later, manuscripts pointed with the Palestinian vocalization system were rediscovered in the Cairo Genizah. Thereafter came the discovery of manuscripts written according to the Tiberian-Palestinian system and, perhaps most importantly, the texts found in caves alongside the Dead Sea.What is still lacking, however, is a comprehensive and systematic overview of the different periods, sources, and traditions of Biblical Hebrew. This handbook provides students and the public with easily accessible, reliable, and current information in English concerning the multi-faceted nature of Biblical Hebrew. Noted scholars in each of the various fields contributed their expertise. The result is the present two-volume work. The first contains an in-depth introduction to each tradition; and the second presents sample accompanying texts that exemplify the descriptions of the parallel introductory chapters.
£56.66
Pennsylvania State University Press Sepphoris II: The Clay Lamps of Ancient Sepphoris
Sepphoris was an important Galilean site from Hellenistic to early Islamic times. This multicultural city is described by Flavius Josephus as the “ornament of all Galilee,” and Rabbi Judah the Prince (ha-Nasi) codified the Mishnah there around 200 CE. The Duke University excavations of the 1980s and 1990s uncovered a large corpus of clay oil lamps in the domestic area of the western summit, and this volume presents these vessels. Richly illustrated with photos and drawings, it describes the various shape-types and includes a detailed catalog of 219 lamps.The volume also explores the origins of the Sepphoris lamps and establishes patterns of their trade, transport, and sale in the lower city’s marketplace. A unique contribution is the use of a combined petrographic and direct current plasma-optical emission spectrometric (dcp-oes) analysis of selected lamp fabrics from sites in Israel and Jordan. This process provided valuable information, indicating that lamps found in Sepphoris came from Judea, the Decapolis, and even Greece, suggesting an urban community fully engaged with other regional centers. Lamp decorations also provide information about the cosmopolitan culture of Sepphoris in antiquity. Discus lamps with erotic scenes and mythological characters suggest Greco-Roman influences, and menorahs portrayed on lamps indicate a vibrant Jewish identity.
£75.56
Pennsylvania State University Press Dictionary of Qumran Aramaic
The Aramaic texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most important discoveries for the history of Aramaic and for the background of early Judaism and Christianity. They constitute a “missing link” between Biblical Aramaic and the later Aramaic of the targums and midrashic literature. Among them are the oldest texts we have of the Book of Enoch and Tobit, as well as the earliest Aramaic translation of a portion of Scripture, the Targum of Job. Other previously unknown texts such as the Genesis Apocryphon and the Aramaic Levi Document have opened up many new avenues of research on the literature of early Judaism, and the dialect itself is chronologically the one nearest to the origins of Christianity.Now, for the first time, there is a comprehensive dictionary of all the Aramaic texts from the 11 Qumran caves, from a noted specialist in Qumran Aramaic. It is the first dictionary in any language devoted solely to this important Aramaic corpus and contains a wealth of detail, including definitions, extensive citations of the sources, discussions of difficult passages, revised readings, and a bibliography. It will be an indispensable resource to anyone interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the literature of early Judaism and Christianity, and the Aramaic language.
£49.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Standing in the Breach: An Old Testament Theology and Spirituality of Intercessory Prayer
At the heart of this study is a biblical-theological approach to central passages on intercessory prayers in the OT. After examining these largely prophetic prayer dialogues, Widmer argues that they provide an important key to biblical theology and spirituality. Furthermore, a close reading of prayers by Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, and Amos reveals fascinating insights into the portrayals of these characters and confirms strong conceptual associations with Moses, Israel’s archetypal mediator. Widmer reads these prayers in both their immediate literary and wider canonical contexts. The ultimate aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the God whom the church worships and confesses to be the Father of Jesus Christ.Particularly pertinent is the finding that many OT prayers interact with God’s nature as revealed to Moses in Exod 34:6–7. Yhwh’s fullest revelation is also given in the context of an intercessory prayer. Widmer argues that intercessory prayer and theology have a hermeneutical-spiral relationship, mutually informing and correcting each other. It is in engaging with a loving and holy God that the phenomenon of divine mutability must be understood. Overall, Standing in the Breach suggests that fundamental biblical themes such as God’s mercy and judgment, divine retribution and forgiveness, covenant mediation, substitutionary suffering and atonement, and eventually the dynamics of the cross are all intrinsically related to and illuminated by prophetic OT intercessory prayers.
£58.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Babel und Bibel 7: Annual of Ancient Near Eastern, Old Testament, and Semitic Studies
This is the seventh volume of Babel und Bibel, an annual of ancient Near Eastern, Old Testament, and Semitic studies. The principal goal of the annual is to reveal the inherent relationship between Assyriology, Semitics, and biblical studies—a relationship that our predecessors comprehended and fruitfully explored but that is often neglected today. The title Babel und Bibel is intended to point to the possibility of fruitful collaboration among the three disciplines, in an effort to explore the various civilizations of the ancient Near East.
£62.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Material Culture Matters: Essays on the Archaeology of the Southern Levant in Honor of Seymour Gitin
Dr. Seymour Gitin is completing his tenure as Director and Dorot Professor at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. Much of his long career has been spent helping young scholars expand their contacts and hone their skills. This volume is a collection of articles by some of the many developing scholars and Albright fellows with whom Sy has shared his time and knowledge. Their appreciation shows in the quality of their articles, the breadth of their interests, and their dedication to Sy Gitin.The articles range from a discussion of tomb robbing in Palestinian areas, to a geographical analysis of the Shephelah region, to Islamic historical texts, to Israelite cult stands, to Middle Bronze Age burials. In addition, there are several articles by former members of the Tel Miqne–Ekron staff that draw on the finds from that site and further demonstrate Sy’s willingness to mentor and to share the publication of the site’s rich trove of materials.This book not only honors Dr. Gitin by the willingness of fellows to contribute to the volume; it also expands our knowledge base of the southern Levant and shows that “Material Culture Matters.”
£50.36
Pennsylvania State University Press Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household
Children were an important part of the ancient Near Eastern household. This idea seems straightforward, but it can be understood in many ways. On a basic level, children are necessary for the perpetuation of a household. On a deeper level, the definitions of child and member of the household are far from categorical. This book begins to explore the multiple definitions of child and the way the child fits within a household. It examines what membership in the household looks like for children and what factors contribute to it. A study addressing what a child is and how a child’s gender and social status affect her place in the household is vital to a proper understanding of the ancient Near Eastern household.Despite their importance, children have long been marginalized in discussions of ancient societies. Only recently has this trend begun to change within biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholarship. A recent wave of studies, especially in relation to the Hebrew Bible, has started to address children in their own right. In light of the current state of scholarship on children, the purpose of this book is threefold. First, Garroway continues to fill out the picture of the child in the ancient Near East by compiling child-centric texts and archaeological realia. In analyzing these materials, she surveys the relationship between children and ancient Near Eastern society by examining the extent to which structuring forces in a community, such as social status and gender, contribute to the process of a child’s becoming a member of his household and society. Finally, this information provides a base for future research, for example, a cross-cultural study of children in the ancient Near East in Classical Antiquity.
£48.56
Pennsylvania State University Press Babel und Bibel 6: Annual of Ancient Near Eastern, Old Testament, and Semitic Studies
This is the sixth volume of Babel und Bibel, an annual of ancient Near Eastern, Old Testament, and Semitic studies. The principal goal of the annual is to reveal the inherent relationship between Assyriology, Semitics, and biblical studies—a relationship that our predecessors comprehended and fruitfully explored but that is often neglected today. The title Babel und Bibel is intended to point to the possibility of fruitful collaboration among the three disciplines, in an effort to explore the various civilizations of the ancient Near East.The tripartite division of Babel und Bibel corresponds to its three principal spheres of interest: ancient Near Eastern, Old Testament, and Semitic studies. Contributions are further subdivided into articles, short notes, and reviews. Highlights of this volume include several studies on Akkadian language, Mesopotamian literature, and publication of inscriptions in some Russian museums (in the ancient Near Eastern section); studies on negative markers in Semitic and on Aramaic language (in the Semitics section); and some significant review essays on important new publications, especially in Hebrew language, Aramaic, Hurrian, Lycian, Egyptian, and Syriac.
£58.46
Pennsylvania State University Press From Fratricide to Forgiveness: The Language and Ethics of Anger in Genesis
In the first book of the Bible, every patriarch and many of the matriarchs become angry in significant ways. However, scholars have largely ignored how Genesis treats this emotion, particularly how Genesis functions as Torah by providing ethical instruction about handling this emotion’s perplexities. In this important work, Schlimm fills this gap in scholarship, describing (1) the language surrounding anger in the Hebrew Bible, (2) the moral guidance that Genesis offers for engaging anger, and (3) the function of anger as a literary motif in Genesis.Genesis evidences two bookends, which expose readers to the opposite extremes of anger and its effects. In Gen 4:1–16, anger takes center stage when Cain kills his brother, Abel, although he has done nothing wrong. Fratricide is at one extreme of the spectrum of anger’s results. In the final chapter of Genesis, readers encounter the opposite extreme, forgiveness. Here, Joseph and his brothers forgive one another after a long history of jealousy, anger, deception, and abuse. It is a moment of reconciliation offered just before the book closes, allowing readers to see Joseph as an anti-Cain—someone who has all the power and all the reasons to harm his brothers but instead turns away from anger and, despite the inherent difficulties, offers forgiveness.Although Genesis frames its post-Edenic narratives with two contrasting outcomes of anger—fratricide and forgiveness—it avoids simplistic moral platitudes, such as demanding that its readers respond to being angry with someone by forgiving the person. Genesis instead returns to the theme of anger on many occasions, presenting a multifaceted message about its ethical significance. The text is quite realistic about the difficulties that individuals face and the paradoxes presented by anger. Genesis presents this emotion as a force that naturally arises from one’s moral sensitivities in response to the perception of wrongdoing. At the same time, the text presents anger as a great threat to the moral life. Genesis thus warns readers about the dangers of anger, but it never suggests that one can lead a life free from this emotion. Instead, it portrays many characters who are forced to deal with anger, presenting them with dilemmas that defy easy resolution. Genesis invites readers to imagine ways of alleviating anger, but it is painfully realistic about how difficult, threatening, and short-lived attempts at reconciliation may be.
£39.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project
Studies in the Text of the Old Testament offers to the English-speaking world the combined introductions to the first three volumes of Dominique Barthélemy’s Critique Textuelle de l’Ancien Testament. CTAT was the culmination of the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, launched by the United Bible Societies in 1969 and carried out by an international team of Old Testament textual critics under the leadership of Eugene Nida.As Emanuel Tov has stated, these introductions form “an almost complete introduction” to the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. They hold an important place in Old Testament textual criticism and can stand alone, apart from the detailed discussions of the textual problems found in the volumes. Part one surveys the history of OT textual criticism “from its origins to J. D. Michaelis” and presents the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project and its goals. Part two describes in detail the background of the modern versions that the HOTTP took into account in its work. Part three, the most extensive section, discusses the textual witnesses—the different forms of the Hebrew text and the contribution of the ancient versions. As his concluding program for a critical edition makes clear, the groundbreaking work of Barthélemy and the HOTTP served as the basis for the new Biblia Hebraica Quinta, which began publication in 2004.UBS undertook the HOTTP to offer Bible translators help in applying the results of textual criticism to their work, but there is no doubt that many others will benefit from this work, as well as the other volumes in the series “Textual Criticism and the Translator.”
£64.76
Pennsylvania State University Press The Yehud Stamp Impressions: A Corpus of Inscribed Impressions from the Persian and Hellenistic Periods in Judah
The study of the yehud stamp impressions, which appear on the handles or bodies of store jars, has persisted for over a century, beginning with the discovery of the first of these impressions at Gezer in 1904. Nevertheless, until the pioneering work of Stern in 1973, who cataloged, classified, and discussed the stamp impressions known up to 1970, discovery and publication of new stamp impressions were scattered, and analysis was cursory at best. Furthermore, a gap in research has persisted since then.Now, Oded Lipschits and David Vanderhooft are pleased to present a comprehensive catalog (through the winter of 2008–9) of published and unpublished yehud stamp impressions, with digital photographs and complete archaeological and publication data for each impression. This long-overdue resource provides a secure foundation for general reflection on the whole corpus and illuminates more-narrow fields such as stratigraphy, paleography, administration, historical geography, and Persian-period economic developments within Yehud. The catalog clarifies what is nebulous apart from a complete corpus, matters such as distribution, petrographic analysis of the clay, new readings of the seal legends, use of the toponym yehud, and significance of the title phwa. The scope of this catalog renders it a worthwhile tool for all future study of these invaluable artifacts and the period of history that produced them.
£83.66
Pennsylvania State University Press The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School
Israel Knohl offers a new perspective on the history and theology of the Priestly source of the Pentateuch. By means of an analysis of specific texts—for example, those that deal with the Sabbath and the Festivals—Knohl demonstrates the existence of two separate Priestly sources, loosely speaking, the two sources that we have referred to as P and the Holiness Code. The “Holiness School” is shown to have been active subsequent to the school that produced the Priestly Torah and, in fact, to have been responsible for the great enterprise of editing the Torah. Knohl examines the conceptions of divinity and ritual reflected in Priestly thought and legislation in ancient Israel and the changes revealed in these conceptions over time. The priesthood appears as an elite group that was closeted within the walls of the “Sanctuary of Silence,” drawn toward the hidden, noble divinity ensconced within its shrine. The later stratum of Priestly writings expresses a desire to transcend the limits of the temple and go out into the broad avenues of the nation, even at the price of surrendering the loftiness of earlier faith and practice. The conclusion describes the changes that occurred in the priests’ world view as an attempt to come to terms with the socioreligious crisis that had brought about a disjunction between ritual and ethics. In response to this crisis, the priests developed a wider conception of holiness, one that integrates ethics and ritual in one sphere.This is a reprint of the 1995 Fortress Press edition.
£40.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Le-David Maskil: A Birthday Tribute for David Noel Freedman
For the past half-century, David Noel Freedman has had an enormous impact on the study of the Bible, both as an author and as an editor of the writings of others. As his colleagues note in their comments at the beginning of this volume, “You are quintessentially the man of the book. And perhaps what impresses us most is that your bibliography of hundreds of books is not limited to the extraordinary number of important books that you’ve written yourself. It also contains the books that you’ve edited for others. And we know what it means to have David Noel Freedman as one’s editor. For every page of manuscript that the author sends you, you send back almost an equal number of pages of advice, criticism, corrections, and improvements. You can make a bad book good, and a good book better. And you can make its author a better scholar and a better writer.” In this volume, his compatriots at the University of California, San Diego, contribute eight varied essays in celebration of his impact on them and in honor of his varied contributions to biblical studies.
£35.95
Pennsylvania State University Press A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller
Patrick Miller is widely known as an educator, editor, President of the Society of Biblical Literature, and academic who is concerned to ensure that academics and the life of the church are not torn asunder in this era of fragmentation. As the editors note, “The depths of Miller’s contributions to church and academy are reflected in the depth of his relationships with family, friends, and colleagues.” This volume honors him for his life’s work, presenting 24 essays by students and colleagues on themes dear to Miller: (1) the Psalms and God’s nearness to his people, and (2) Torah (Deuteronomy, in particular) and God’s connection with his people in their lives together. A bibliography of Miller’s writings is also included.
£53.06
Pennsylvania State University Press The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine
There is a common perception that the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the seventh century caused a decline in the number and prosperity of settlements throughout the country. The role played by archaeology in perpetuating this view, claims Magness, is particularly insidious, because it is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as providing “scientific” (and therefore “objective”) data. Thus, archaeological evidence is frequently cited by scholars as proof or confirmation that Palestine declined after the Muslim conquest, and especially after the rise of the Abbasids in the mid-eighth century. Instead, Magness argues that the archaeological evidence, freed insofar as possible of political and/or religious biases, supports the idea that Palestine and Syria experienced a tremendous growth in population and prosperity between the mid-sixth and mid-seventh centuries. Such a radical shift in the interpretation of the evidence guarantees that this volume will be a benchmark with which future interpretations must reckon.The book includes a CD with map and key, which provides additional information regarding the sites studied and the area examined.
£58.46
Pennsylvania State University Press Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen
A fitting tribute to the life and achievements of Donald P. Hansen, this collection includes contributions by Z. Bahrani, R. A. Fazzini, R. E. Freed, P. O. Harper, J. and D. Oates, D. O’Connor, E. L. Ochsenschlager, E. Holmes-Peck, W. H. Peck, H. Pittman, M. Van de Mieroop, M. S. Venit, K. Wilson, I. J. Winter, and many others.
£55.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Humanism, Culture, and Language in the Near East: Studies in Honor of Georg Krotkoff
Essays by 33 colleagues, friends, and students of the Johns Hopkins University Arabist and linguist. Topics include (1) humanism, culture, and literature; (2) Arabic; (3) Aramaic; and (4) Afroasiatic.
£58.46
Pennsylvania State University Press A Compendious Syriac Dictionary: Founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. Payne Smith
This standard lexicon of Syriac has long been the choice of students of Syriac, both for its comprehensiveness and also because of its handy size. It originated as an abridgement of Payne Smith’s Thesaurus Syriacus, a substantically larger work that also tends to be less accessible for the student. Here the meanings of the Syriac words are given in English, and the order of the Syriac is alphabetical, to avoid requiring the student to know the root of the word being looked up. An essential tool for anyone studying or researching Syriac texts or literature and for students of the Semitic languages.The Compendious Syriac Dictionary was first published by Oxford University Press in 1903 and has been out of print for a number of years. A quality Eisenbrauns reprint based on the 1976 printing.
£71.96
Pennsylvania State University Press From the Rooftops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space
The celebrated Ashcan School artist John Sloan produced a distinctive body of work depicting life on the rooftops of early twentieth-century New York City. Designed to accompany the major loan exhibition of the same name organized by the Palmer Museum of Art, From the Rooftops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space examines the allure of rooftop locales for Sloan, as well as for more than a dozen of his contemporaries.From his early career as an illustrator in Philadelphia to the final years of his life, Sloan nurtured a fascination with what he called the “roof life of the metropolis.” Devoted to the importance of this setting in Sloan’s oeuvre, From the Rooftops features paintings, prints, and photographs by Sloan, alongside examples from other notable artists of the time, such as George Ault, William Glackens, Hughie Lee-Smith, Edward Hopper, and Reginald Marsh—artists who were likewise enthralled by “the city above the city.” In this book, art historian Adam Thomas explores the pivotal role that New York’s City’s rooftops played in Sloan’s thinking about urban space and places Sloan’s work within its broader artistic and cultural context. In his analysis, Thomas considers the liminal status of the rooftop and its complexities as both an extension of the domestic sphere and an escape from it during a period of profound social and architectural transformation in New York City. Featuring insightful analysis and more than eighty full-color illustrations, this catalog will appeal to art historians and art enthusiasts alike.
£20.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Taxing Visions: Financial Episodes in Late Nineteenth-Century American Art
In Taxing Visions, Leo Mazow and Kevin Murphy explore taxes, rents, economic depression, and financial inequity as subject matter in several visually provocative paintings and works on paper. Although this period is often identified artistically with leisure-laden impressionist landscapes, flowing-with-abundance still-life paintings, and class-conscious “official” portraits, practitioners working in a variety of stylistic idioms reckoned with financial panics and occupational turmoil that marked the Reconstruction, Gilded Age, and early Progressive eras. These paintings, drawings, and prints demonstrate with sometimes startling clarity the experience of economic downturn, ultimately picking up where facts, figures, and the printed word leave off.Featured artists include William Michael Harnett, George Inness, Eastman Johnson, and James McNeill Whistler, as well as several lesser-known individuals, in part because their art “taxes” our sensibilities of socioeconomic propriety. Taxing Visions shows satire and protest playing out through a sizable body of work, with artists confronting recession and depression with equal parts reportage, invective, humor, and hope. This catalogue accompanies an exhibition of the same name organized by the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University and the Huntington Library and Art Collections in San Marino, California.
£22.95
Pennsylvania State University Press The Poetry of Line: Drawings by Henry Pearson
Published by the Palmer Museum of Art Henry Pearson is often linked to the Op Art movement of the 1960s because his best-known paintings feature a labyrinth of undulating parallel lines. Yet his work, although included in the landmark exhibition of 1965, "The Responsive Eye," has an intuitive rhythm and poetic elegance that fall well outside the calculated, often hard-edged structures favored by most Op artists. World War II interrupted Pearson’s first career in theater design but led to a prolonged contact with Japanese culture and a passion for painting. Back in New York City, Pearson studied at the Art Students League and, as early as 1959, began to develop drawings he had made during the war from secret Japanese survey maps. Gradually, he transformed a topography of mountains and valleys into nonobjective forms that reflect a personal vision and herald a new era of linear abstraction in his work. The Poetry of Line accompanied an exhibition of Pearson’s drawings from 1959 to the mid-1970s, the years when the artist moved toward geometric abstraction. This work is crucial from the standpoint of draftsmanship because it achieves a status above that of a sketch or study and makes an artistic statement at once complete and intimate.
£16.95
Pennsylvania State University Press New York Women of Wit in the Twentieth Century
Seen as too smart, too sassy, too sexy, and too strident, female humorists have been resisted and overlooked. New York Women of Wit in the Twentieth Century corrects this tendency, focusing on the foremothers of women’s humor in modern America, who used satire, irony, and wit as indirect forms of social protest.This book focuses on the women who stood on the periphery of predominantly male New York intellectual circles in the twentieth century. Sabrina Fuchs Abrams argues that the advent of modernism, the women’s suffrage movement, the emergence of the New Woman and the New Negro Woman, and the growth of urban centers in the 1920s and ’30s gave rise to a new voice of women’s humor, one that was at once defiant and conflicted in defining female identity and the underlying assumptions about gender roles in American society. Her study gives special attention to the contributions of the satirists Edna St. Vincent Millay (pseudonym Nancy Boyd), Tess Slesinger, Dorothy Parker, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Dawn Powell, and Mary McCarthy.Grounded in theories of humor, feminist and critical race theory, and urban studies, this book will find an audience among scholars and students interested in women writers, feminist humor, modern American literature, and African American studies.
£89.96
Pennsylvania State University Press Actors Carved and Cast
£103.95
Pennsylvania State University Press Blackbird: How Black Musicians Sang the Beatles into Being—and Sang Back to Them Ever After
From the beginning, the Beatles acknowledged in interviews their debt to Black music, apparent in their covers of and written original songs inspired by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, the Shirelles, and other giants of R&B. Blackbird goes deeper, appreciating unacknowledged forerunners, as well as Black artists whose interpretations keep the Beatles in play.Drawing on interviews with Black musicians and using the song “Blackbird” as a touchstone, Katie Kapurch and Jon Marc Smith tell a new history. They present unheard stories and resituate old ones, offering the phrase “transatlantic flight” to characterize a back-and-forth dialogue shaped by Black musicians in the United States and elsewhere, including Liverpool. Kapurch and Smith find a lineage that reaches back to the very origins of American popular music, one that involves the original twentieth-century blackbird, Florence Mills, and the King of the Twelve String, Lead Belly. Continuing the circular flight path with Nina Simone, Billy Preston, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Sylvester, and others, the authors take readers into the twenty-first century, when Black artists like Bettye LaVette harness the Beatles for today.Detailed, thoughtful, and revelatory, Blackbird explores musical and storytelling legacies full of rich but contested symbolism. Appealing to those interested in developing a deep understanding of the evolution of popular music, this book promises that you’ll never hear “Blackbird”—and the Beatles—the same way again.
£20.95
Pennsylvania State University Press The Stoics: A Bilingual Critical Edition
Louisa Siefert was a prolific poet, critic, playwright, and novelist who published many works that were bestsellers in nineteenth-century France. This bilingual critical edition of Siefert’s Les Stoïques (1870) aims to restore Louisa Siefert’s intellectual legacy while providing ample material for further scholarship on her unique poetic voice. Siefert’s intellectual power and aesthetic originality are especially pronounced in her Les Stoïques, a volume that exemplifies her transdisciplinary mind and rich sonnet practice. The more than forty poems collected here are presented in the original French with masterful translations into English by Norman R. Shapiro, one of the most highly regarded English translators of French poetry. Shapiro’s inspired translations of Siefert’s texts give readers gain a sense of her prosodic mastery and flair as well as the way she uses poetry to think about the relation between mind and body. In her introduction, Adrianna M. Paliyenko reconstructs from original archival research the reception of Les Stoïques from May 1870 to the present, describing how many nineteenth-century readers considered Siefert’s philosophical verse to be central to her contribution to French poetic history and, in turn, how the gendering of poetic expression and the canon sidelined Siefert’s intellectual accomplishment.A monumental achievement, this book brings the work of a major French poet to a broader audience. Siefert’s poetic primer on the Stoic way of thinking about why humans suffer or find serenity and joy, and other big questions of life, will strike a chord with modern readers.
£75.56
Pennsylvania State University Press Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats
A uniquely powerful marker of ethnic, gender, and class identities, scent can also overwhelm previously constructed boundaries and transform social-sensory realities within contexts of environmental degradation, pathogen outbreaks, and racial politics. This innovative multidisciplinary volume critically examines olfaction in Asian societies with the goal of unlocking its full potential as an analytical frame and lived phenomenon.Featuring contributions from international scholars with deep knowledge of the region, this volume conceptualizes Asia and its borders as a dynamic, transnationally connected space of olfactory exchange. Using examples such as trade along the Silk Road; the diffusion of dharmic religious traditions out of South Asia; the waves of invasion, colonization, and forced relocation that shaped the history of the continent; and other “sensory highways” of contact, the contributors break down essentializing olfactory tropes and reveal how scent functions as a category of social and moral boundary-marking and boundary-breaching within, between, and beyond Asian societies. Smell shapes individual, collective, and state-based memory, as well as discourses about heritage and power. As such, it suggests a pervasive and powerful intimacy that contributes to our understanding of the human condition, mobility, and interconnection.In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Khoo Gaik Cheng, Jean Duruz, Qian Jia, Shivani Kapoor, Adam Liebman, Lorenzo Marinucci, Peter Romaskiewicz, Saki Tanada, Aubrey Tang, and Ruth E. Toulson.
£86.36