Penn Press Log

The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance--Now Available

The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance
Dana E. Katz
248 pages | 6 x 9 | 70 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4085-6 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

Dana E. Katz reveals how Italian Renaissance painting became part of a policy of tolerance that deflected violence from the real world onto a symbolic world. While the rulers upheld toleration legislation governing Christian-Jewish relations, they simultaneously supported artistic commissions that perpetuated violence against Jews.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Medici Gardens--Now Available

Medici Gardens: From Making to Design
Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto
328 pages | 6 x 9 | 54 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4072-6 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture series

Medici Gardens challenges the common assumption that such gardens as Trebbio, Cafaggiolo, Careggi, and Fiesole were the products of an established design practice whereby one client commissioned one architect or artist. The book suggests that in the case of the gardens in Florence garden making preceded its theoretical articulation.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Periodization and Sovereignty--Now Available

Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time
Kathleen Davis
208 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4083-2 | $42.50 | £28.00
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

By examining periodization together with the two controversial categories of feudalism and secularization, Kathleen Davis exposes the relationship between the constitution of "the Middle Ages" and the history of sovereignty, slavery, and colonialism.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Richard Helgerson

Staff at the University of Pennsylvania Press were saddened by the news of the death of Richard Helgerson, Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, author of numerous books--including A Sonnet from Carthage: Garcilaso de la Vega and the New Poetry of Sixteenth-Century Europe--and translator of Joachim du Bellay: "The Regrets," with "The Antiquities of Rome," Three Latin Elegies, and "The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language."  Professor Helgerson passed away on Saturday, April 26  in Santa Barbara, home of the institution where he had taught for over thirty-five years.

An obituary of Helgerson appears on the homepage of The Early Modern Center of the Department of English, UCSB and contains a link to Thoughts on Richard, a weblog where visitors can share their memories of the late scholar.

Robin Chapman Stacey wins ACIS Prize

The American Conference for Irish Studies presented Robin Chapman Stacey with the James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences for his Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland. Stacey accepted the prize at this year's ACIS national conference held at  St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.

Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe--Now Availability

Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe
Ruth Mazo Karras, Joel Kaye, and E. Ann Matter, Editors
328 pages | 6 x 9
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4080-1 | $59.95 | £39.00
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. However, historians have long recognized that medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law and legal procedure. This book makes the case that one cannot understand the era's cultural trends without considering the profound development of law.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe--Now Available

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives
Edited by Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifshitz
168 pages | 6 x 9 | 3 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4069-6 | $39.95 | £26.00
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe seeks to explain the convergence of religion and gender in medieval Christendom. Essays in the volume examine how Europeans identified themselves as women, men, and Christians, and how these identities influenced religious belief and practice in everyday life.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Medieval Academy Prize Goes to Sara Poor

Sara S. Poor's Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority has received another award. The Medieval Academy selected this study of a thirteenth-century mystic as cowinner of the 2008 John Nicholas Brown Prize for the best first book in Medieval Studies.

Poor is the third Penn Press author to win this Medieval Academy prize. She is preceded by Iain Macleod Higgins, author of Writing East: The "Travels" of Sir John Mandeville, and Robin Chapman Stacey, author of  The Road to Judgment: From Custom to Court in Medieval Ireland and Wales.

TLS Review of Howard's Theater of a City

A review of Jean E. Howard's Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642 appears in the January 18th  Times Literary Supplement.  In the review, Duncan Salkeld praises Howard's examination of  "drama's depiction of brothers and of modish dancing halls and ballrooms" and her "willingness to explore various contradictory ways in which city comedy held up these loci for an audience's entertainment and scrutiny."  He ends by calling Theater of a City  "an important, pioneering and fascinating study."

TLS subscribers can read the entire review at the TLS web site.

Singing the New Song--Now Available

Singing the New Song: Literacy and Liturgy in Late Medieval England
Katherine Zieman
312 pages | 6 x 9 | 6 illus.
Cloth Dec 2007 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4051-1 | $59.95 | £39.00
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

In Singing the New Song, Katherine Zieman examines the institutions and practices of the liturgy as central to changes in late medieval English understandings of the written word.

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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.