Bücher veröffentlicht von Pennsylvania State University Press

A reconsideration of the doctrine of creation from nothing, arguing that it emerges from the early Christian reading of Genesis 1 within the two-testament literary-canonical context of Scripture.

A collection of essays focusing on the relationship between concepts of the holy and the unholy in western European medieval culture. Demonstrates how religion, magic, and science were all modes of engagement with a natural world that was understood to be divinely created and infused with mysterious power.

Examines the technology of writing as it existed in ancient Israel. Utilizes the Hebrew Bible as its corpus and focuses on a set of Hebrew terms that designated writing surfaces and writing instruments.

Revisits the theme of alienation in modernist literature, finding an alternative aesthetic centered on the experience of double exile. Explores examples drawn from the cultural groupings of the New Negro movement, Parisian expatriates in the 1920s, and the queer expatriate scene in Los Angeles before Stonewall.

Describes the Ansaru Allah Community/Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH), a 1970s religious movement in Brooklyn that spread, in part, through the production and dissemination of literature and lecture tapes. Tracks the development of AAC/NIH discourse to reveal surprising consistency and coherence behind the appearance of serial reinvention.

A novel treatment of a group of early Christian authors, demonstrating that their behavior and self-presentation were shaped by the norms of Roman intellectual culture, and not simply by factors internal to Christianity.

Studies the epistemologies of two of the most influential intellectual/spiritual traditions of West Africa: Tijani Sufism and Ifa.

Drawing from the writings of John Dewey, identifies the core attitudes of fascism, sets forth an idea of democracy as communicative practice, and defines the values and methods of humanistic logic, aesthetics, and rhetoric.

An interpretation of early modern Paris demonstrating that sound was as important as vision during the reign of Louis XIV. Discloses myriad ways in which sound generated an interpenetration of elite and popular culture, revealing complex acoustic dimensions of class, politics, sexuality, and punishment.

Examines the rhetorical practices that generate and sustain discrimination against disabled people. Demonstrates how ableist values, knowledge, and ways of seeing pervade Western culture and influence social institutions such as law, sport, and religion.

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.

For many years, the historical-critical quest for a reconstruction of the origin(s) and development of the Pentateuch or Hexateuch has been dominated by the documentary hypothesis, the heuristic power of which has produced a consensus so strong that an interpreter who did not operate within its framework was hardly regarded as a scholar. However, the relentless march of research on this topic has continued to yield new and refined analyses, data, methodological tools, and criticism. In this spirit, the contributions to this volume investigate new ideas about the composition of the Pentateuch arising from careful analysis of the biblical text against its ancient Near Eastern background.Covering a wide spectrum of topics and diverging perspectives, the chapters in this book are grouped into two parts. The first is primarily concerned with the history of scholarship and alternative approaches to the development of the Pentateuch. The second focuses on the exegesis of particular texts relevant to the composition of the Torah. The aim of the project is to foster investigation and collegial dialogue in a spirit of humility and frankness, without imposing uniformity.In addition to the editors, the contributors include Tiago Arrais, Richard E. Averbeck, John S. Bergsma, Joshua A. Berman, Daniel I. Block, Richard Davidson, Roy E. Gane, Duane A. Garrett, Richard S. Hess, Benjamin Kilchör, Michael LeFebvre, Jiří Moskala, and Christian Vogel.

A collection of essays that encompass the two principal approaches to the history of ancient Near Eastern studies: descriptive historiography and intellectual history

Traces the theme of justice through the whole narrative of Exodus. Explores how YHWH's reclamation of Israel for worship-service reveals a distinct theological ethic of justice that is grounded in YHWH's creational agenda.

Examines a series of linked case studies that not only highlight moments of seeming disconnect between seeing and believing, including hoaxes, miracles, spirit paintings, manipulated photographs, and holograms, but also offer a sensory history of ways of seeing.

A study of romance, religion, and politics in seventeenth-century England, presenting a recontextualized understanding of romance as a multi-generic narrative structure or strategy rather than a prose genre.

Examines widespread myths about transhumanism and explores the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement.

Examines motion pictures produced or sponsored by Ford Motor Company from a rhetorical perspective, demonstrating how the films reveal a long-term rhetorical project that has helped embed corporations into many of the social systems guiding societies today.

Using an ecomaterialist conceptual framework, addresses interconnected stories from fiction, nonfiction, works of visual art, and physical sites in Italy and elsewhere.

In this comparative and hybrid study, Reginald A. Wilburn offers the first scholarly work to theorize African American authors'' rebellious appropriations of Milton and his canon. Wilburn engages African Americans'' transatlantic negotiations with perhaps the preeminent freedom writer in the English tradition.Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt contends that early African American authors appropriated and remastered Milton by completing and complicating England''s epic poet of liberty with the intertextual originality of repetitive difference. Wilburn focuses on a diverse array of early African American authors, such as Phillis Wheatley, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frederick Douglass, and Anna Julia Cooper. He examines the presence of Milton in their works as a reflection of early African Americans'' rhetorical affiliations with the poet''s satanic epic for messianic purposes of freedom and racial uplift.Wilburn explains that early African American authors were attracted to Milton because of his preeminent status in literary tradition, strong Christian convictions, and poetic mastery of the English language. This tripartite ministry makes Milton an especially indispensible intertext for authors whose writings and oratory were sometimes presumed beneath the dignity of criticism. Through close readings of canonical and obscure texts, Wilburn explores how various authors rebelled against such assessments of black intellect by altering Milton''s meanings, themes, and figures beyond orthodox interpretations and imbuing them with hermeneutic shades of interpretive and cultural difference. However they remastered Milton, these artists respected his oeuvre as a sacred yet secular talking book of revolt, freedom, and cultural liberation.Preaching the Gospel of Black Revolt particularly draws upon recent satanic criticism in Milton studies, placing it in dialogue with methodologies germane to African American literary studies. By exposing the subversive workings of an intertextual Middle Passage in black literacy, Wilburn invites scholars from diverse areas of specialization to traverse within and beyond the cultural veils of racial interpretation and along the color line in literary studies.

In The Plague in Print, Rebecca Totaro takes the reader into the world of plague-riddled Elizabethan England, documenting the development of distinct subgenres related to the plague and providing unprecedented access to important original sources of early modern plague writing. Totaro elucidates the interdisciplinary nature of plague writing, which raises religious, medical, civic, social, and individual concerns in early modern England. Each of the primary texts in the collection offers a glimpse into a particular subgenre of plague writing, beginning with Thomas Moulton''s plague remedy and prayers published by the Church of England and devoted to the issue of the plague. William Bullein''s A Dialogue, both pleasant and pietyful, a work that both addresses concerns related to the plague and offers humorous literary entertainment, exemplifies the multilayered nature of plague literature. The plague orders of Queen Elizabeth I highlight the community-wide attempts to combat the plague and deal with its manifold dilemmas. And after a plague bill from the Corporation of London, the collection ends with Thomas Dekker''s The Wonderful Year, which illustrates plague literature as it was fully formed, combining attitudes toward the plague from both the Elizabethan and Stuart periods.These writings offer a vivid picture of important themes particular to plague literature in England, providing valuable insight into the beliefs and fears of those who suffered through bubonic plague while illuminating the cultural significance of references to the plague in the more familiar early modern literature by Spenser, Donne, Milton, Shakespeare, and others. As a result, The Plague in Print will be of interest to students and scholars in a number of fields, including sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, cultural studies, medical humanities, and the history of medicine.