in this issue
year in review: 2021 by the numbers
With over 120 books released, a trade imprint launched, and exciting new relationships with organizations such as Diamond Comics Distributors, De Gruyter’s University Press Library, and Duke’s Scholarly Publishing Collective, 2021 was a busy and gratifying year for the Press! Below are some of the many highlights. We can’t wait to see what 2022 has in store.
—Patrick Alexander, Director
3 “best of” lists
11 awards
Menopause: A Comic Treatment, edited by MK Czerwiec, was awarded the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Anthology.
Mimi Pond’s comic “When the Menopausal Carnival Comes to Town,” included in Menopause: A Comic Treatment, won the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Short Story.
Jodi Cranston’s Green Worlds of Renaissance Venice won the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Best Book Prize in Renaissance Venetian Studies, Renaissance Society of America.
Rabies in the Streets: Interspecies Camaraderie in Urban India, by Deborah Nadal, won the IBP 2021 English Language Book Award in the Social Sciences.
Baptism Through Incision: The Postmortem Cesarean Operation in the Spanish Empire, edited by Martha Few, Zeb Tortorici, and Adam Warren and translated by Nina M. Scott, was awarded the 2021 Teaching Edition Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender.
Oludamini Ogunnaike’s Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions was awarded the 2021 Outstanding First Book Prize by the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).
Nicholas R. Jones’s Staging “Habla de Negros”: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain was awarded the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize by the Modern Language Association.
Hope in Hard Times: Norvelt and the Struggle for Community During the Great Depression, by Timothy Kelly, Margaret Power, and Michael Cary, won the Arthur St. Clair Historic Preservation Award, Westmoreland Historical Society.
Joshua Eckhardt’s Religion Around John Donne was awarded the John Donne Society Award for Distinguished Publication.
Jennifer Nelson’s Disharmony of the Spheres: The Europe of Holbein’s Ambassadors was awarded the Book prize for exemplary scholarship on the period before 1600, Historians of British Art.
70+ exhibits & conferences
Between virtual exhibits hosted on our website, collaborations with Scholar’s Choice, and participation in conferences with organizations such as the International Conference on Medieval Studies, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, and the Association for Jewish Studies, our books were well represented around the globe! Look for us in 2022 at meetings for the College Art Association, American Library Association, American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature, and many more.
11 virtual “psu press presents” events
PSU Press Presents is a monthly virtual event series featuring authors of new and recent books in conversation with one another. Learn more and find links to recordings of past events on our website.
260+ reviews! some highlights:
3 new series launched
3 new series announced
80 journals on 1 new platform
In a collaboration called the Scholarly Publishing Collective, PSU Press partnered with Duke University Press and other nonprofit scholarly journal publishers and societies to provide journal services including subscription management, fulfillment, hosting, and institutional marketing and sales. Learn more here.
1 new e-book partnership
Early in 2021, PSU Press joined 15 other prestigious university presses on De Gruyter’s University Press Library (UPL), an important initiative that delivers e-book collections to higher education institutional partners worldwide.
20 new “eisen-books”
Eisenbrauns, our imprint for scholarship on the ancient Near East and biblical studies, published 20 titles, including a monumental volume on archaeological excavations in the City of David in Jerusalem and A Handbook of Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Near East. See more highlights from 2021 here.
1 new imprint
Graphic Mundi, our new graphic novel imprint, launched in February. See our rundown of the first year’s highlights here.
1 engaged & generous community
Donors from the Penn State community and beyond came together to generously support the Press’s internship program on Giving Tuesday—the Tuesday after Thanksgiving—helping us jump-start future publishing careers for more students.
Learn about additional opportunities to support the Press here!
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