Bluelines: News from Penn State University Press

in this issue

General News
New & Noteworthy
Subject/Series Highlight
Upcoming Events
Unlocked Book of the Month
Awards & Reviews
Journal News
New from Eisenbrauns

general news

Welcome to the January issue of Bluelines!

It’s a new year! Be sure to visit our sales page for great discounts on reading that will warm you on a cold winter evening. Bookmark the page and check back often, as conference specials change frequently. Or, better yet, subscribe to all our emails so you won’t miss out on any special offers.

Our Spring/Summer 2020 catalog is now available! Browse a digital version here.

Enjoy!
The PSU Press staff

new & noteworthy

Framing the Church

The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture

Maile S. Hutterer

“Maile Hutterer opens our minds to what our eyes have always told us about the great French cathedrals: that the giant flying buttresses that ring their exteriors are not mere structural devices but inspired works of architecture as an art. Unlike the relatively uniform interiors of these huge buildings, no two sets of buttressing are alike. They vary in extravagant and subtle ways, and in the process, they accrue important layers of meaning through sculptural ornament as well as their structure and shaping of space. They now have a meaningful history. A breakthrough contribution to the study of medieval architecture.”—Marvin Trachtenberg, author of Building-in-Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion

Sewn in Coal Country

An Oral History of the Ladies’ Garment Industry in Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1945–1995

Edited by Robert P. Wolensky

“A detailed yet readable study of the lives of the garment industry. This is a fine social history of ordinary people that brings the past to life.”—Richard A. Greenwald, author of The Triangle Fire, the Protocols of Peace, and Industrial Democracy In Progressive Era New York

Pet Projects

Animal Fiction and Taxidermy in the Nineteenth-Century Archive

Elizabeth Young

“Pet Projects takes animal humanities research to new heights. Recovering the animal-advocacy stories of Canada’s first best-selling author, Margaret Marshall Saunders, Young also uses feminist personal criticism to frame a timely history of animal studies, one that calls out the desires of so many to invent the field, while at the same time identifying how its development has involved collaborative negotiations at the crossroads of disciplines”—Susan McHugh, author of Love in a Time of Slaughters: Human-Animal Stories Against Genocide and Extinction

The Bonds of Humanity

Cicero’s Legacies in European Social and Political Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1550

Cary J. Nederman

“An invaluable resource for early European political thought. Nederman’s careful reading and thorough scholarship fill an important gap in our understanding of the influence of Cicero in this neglected period.”—Dean Hammer, author of Roman Political Thought: From Cicero to Augustine

subject/series highlight

“Year End Review 2019”

Hear two of our Graphic Medicine authors, Susan Squier and MK Czerwiec, talk Graphic Medicine in 2019 and plans for the future.

upcoming exhibits & events

JANUARY Book launch for
C. Oliver O’Donnell’s
Meyer Schapiro’s
Critical Debates,
UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies
1/20

JANUARY ALA Midwinter
in
Philadelphia, PA
1/24–28

FEBRUARY College Art
Association
Conference
in
Chicago, IL
2/12–15

unlocked book of the month

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: Literary Obscenities: U.S. Case Law and Naturalism after Modernism, part of our Refiguring Modernism series.

“This comparative historical study explores the broad sociocultural factors at play in the relationships among U.S. obscenity laws and literary modernism and naturalism in the early twentieth century. Putting obscenity case law’s crisis of legitimation and modernism’s crisis of representation into dialogue, Erik Bachman shows how obscenity trials and other attempts to suppress allegedly vulgar writing in the United States affected a wide-ranging debate about the power of the printed word to incite. . . ” (more)

awards & reviews

PopMatters names The Book of Sarah by Sarah Lightman one of the best non-fiction books of 2019.

ARTnews calls Jonathan Weinberg’s Pier Groups: Art and Sex Along the New York Waterfront one of the best queer art books of 2019.

journal news

Free issue of The Good Society

Volume 27 1–2 of The Good Society: A Journal of Civic Studies is free on JSTOR until March 30th.

Special issue of Journal of General Education

Read the editors’ and guest editors’ introductions to a special issue of Journal of General Education on JSTOR.

new from eisenbrauns

A Concise History of Ancient Israel

From the Beginnings Through the Hellenistic Era

Bernd U. Schipper, and translated by Michael Lesley

The history of biblical Israel, as it is told in the Hebrew Bible, differs substantially from the history of ancient Israel as it can be reconstructed using ancient Near Eastern texts and archaeological evidence. In A Concise History of Ancient Israel, Bernd U. Schipper uses this evidence to present a critical revision of the history of Israel and Judah from the late second millennium BCE to the beginning of the Roman period. . . (more)

Writing Neo-Assyrian History

Sources, Problems, and Approaches

Edited by Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi, Raija Mattila, and Robert Rollinger

The purpose of the papers read at the meeting held in Helsinki, Finland, in 2014, and of the relevant proceedings forming this volume, was to discuss and update the historical methodologies adopted in the past and present study of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The title of the meeting and of this proceedings volume, “Writing Neo-Assyrian History,” clearly indicates the aim of the organizers and of the participants: to submit to both specialized scholars and educated readers a comprehensive outline of the. . . (more)

VIEW Ancient News, the Eisenbrauns newsletter.

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