psu PSU Press News, June 2023
PSU Press News

in this issue

general news

Welcome to the June issue of PSU Press News!

Our warehouse sale is back! We need to make space for more good books, and so we’re offering great deals on our existing inventory. Browse the full sale here and use discount code WHS23 at checkout to get the discount. Sale ends 6/25.

The Penn State University Press Fall/Winter 2023 catalog is now live! Browse the catalog to see what we’re publishing later this year.

Enjoy!

The PSU Press staff

new & noteworthy

Cover for Murder and Madness on Trial Murder and Madness on Trial

A Tale of True Crime from Early Modern Bologna

Mònica Calabritto

“Paints a complex and rich picture of early modern madness. Thanks to the unusual abundance of the documentation of the case—legal, medical, literary—Calabritto describes in detail a nuanced case of murder, illness, and conflict of expertise, interpretation, and political cultures.”—Paolo Savoia, author of Gaspare Tagliacozzi and Early Modern Surgery: Faces, Men, and Pain

Cover for Skepticism's Pictures Skepticism’s Pictures

Figuring Descartes’s Natural Philosophy

Melissa Lo

“Lo gives us a fresh and lively framework for understanding anew both Descartes’s work in his time and the emergence of a Cartesianism fit for other purposes. Skepticism’s Pictures is an important intervention in several current historical and philosophical debates”—Harold J. Cook, author of The Young Descartes: Nobility, Rumor, and War

Cover for African American Artists and the New Deal Art Programs African American Artists and the New Deal Art Programs

Opportunity, Access, and Community

Mary Ann Calo
Epilogue by Jacqueline Francis

“Contributes importantly to the literature on New Deal art and race, exploring the opportunities and limits the art projects created for Black visual artists. Drawing on under-researched records, especially the Black extension galleries in the South, Calo shows how the art projects provided new resources for Black artists while maintaining racial discrimination and segregation.”—Sharon Musher, author of Democratic Art: The New Deal’s Influence on American Culture

Cover for Maritime Animals Maritime Animals

Ships, Species, Stories

Edited by Kaori Nagai

“With each chapter focusing on relationships between humans, ships, and different animal species, Maritime Animals redefines the scope of what we see as maritime into a less anthropocentric conceptualization of ocean-based interactions. Through animal case studies, the authors present the maritime world as a complex ecology of human and nonhuman interactions, mediated through the technologies of ships. This book makes valuable contributions in particular to animal studies, environmental history, ecocriticism, and maritime history.”—Jakobina Arch, author of Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan

subject/series highlight

Cover for Every Living Thing

Mònica Calabritto, author of Murder and Madness on Trial, discusses how the insanity defense was used in early modern Bologna, and how that compares to its use today in a guest post on our Tumblr.

Read her post, “Insanity Defense Across History,” on our Tumblr.

awards & reviews

Cover for The Absent Image

Congratulations to Elina Gertsman, whose book The Absent Image is the winner of the 2023 Gründler Book Prize!

Cover for Out in Central Pennsylvania

Out in Central Pennsylvania by William Burton and Barry Loveland is WITF’s June Pick of the Month!

Cover for Herrnhut

Congratulations to Paul Peucker, whose book Herrnhut is the winner of the 2023 Dale W. Brown Book Award!

Cover for An Artful Relic

Sehepunkte says of Andrew R. Casper’s An Artful Relic: “Given the historiographical delay in this subject, we can only rejoice to see new avenues opened up by the work of Andrew R. Casper.”

june exhibits & events

14
JUNE Book launch for Norman E. Donoghue II’s Prisoners of Congress at the Arch Street Meeting House in Philadelphia, PA
15
JUNE Talk w/ Lior Sternfeld, coauthor of Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle, at the Jewish Study Center in Washington, D.C.
29
JUNE Book talk and signing with Margaretta Lovell, author of Painting the Inhabited Landscape, at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, MA

unlocked book of the month

Cover for North Pennsylvania Minstrelsy

Each month we’re highlighting a book available through PSU Press Unlocked, an open-access initiative featuring scholarly digital books and journals in the humanities and social sciences.

This month’s pick: North Pennsylvania Minstrelsy.

journals news

Cover for Pennsylvania History

Click here to read this free article from the journal Pennsylvania History! “A Moravian Rifle Goes to War: Disarming and Arming Pennsylvanians, 1775–1776.”

Cover for Journal for the History of Rhetoric

There are currently six free articles to read in Journal for the History of Rhetoric. The simplest way to find them is to click here and navigate to the following volumes and issues: 25/1, 25/2, 25/3, and 26/1.

new from eisenbrauns

Cover for The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part II The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part II

Letters from Southern Babylonia

Edited by Grant Frame and Simo Parpola

The present volume completes the critical edition of the political correspondence of Assurbanipal, the first part of which was published in SAA 21. The 163 letters edited here were sent from southern Mesopotamia and Elam, mostly by governors or other high-ranking local administrators and military commanders.

Cover image for The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC), Assur-etel-ilani (630-627 BC), and Sin-sarra-iskun (626-612 BC), Kings of Assyria, Part 2 An Annotated Sumerian Dictionary

Mark E. Cohen

Sumerian was the first language to be put into writing (ca. 3200–3100 BCE), and it is the language for which the cuneiform script was originally developed. Even after it was supplanted by Akkadian as the primary spoken language in ancient Mesopotamia, Sumerian continued to be used as a scholarly written language until the end of the first millennium BCE. This volume presents the first comprehensive English-language scholarly lexicon of Sumerian.

See more from Eisenbrauns over at Ancient News.

new from graphic mundi

Cover for The Prophet The Prophet

A Graphic Novel Adaptation

Kahlil Gibran
Script by A. David Lewis, and art by Justin Rentería

“This adaptation of The Prophet accomplishes what surprisingly few comics adaptations manage: elevation of the original. More than simply presenting the work to a new audience, with a few neat illustrations thrown in, the team of A. David Lewis and Justin Rentería have broadened the story and provided visual metaphors that help the poetry sing to the reader.“—Ashley Kronsberg, Noe’s Comics Nook

Cover for Nuking Alaska Nuking Alaska

Notes of an Atomic Fugitive

Peter Dunlap-Shohl

“This eye-opening chronicle of the domestic perils of the Cold War will resonate for any reader apprehensive of nuclear weapons.” —Publishers Weekly

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