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.

Art Work--Now Available

Art Work: Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York
April F. Masten
312 pages | 6 x 9 | 55 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4071-9 | $59.95 | £39.00
A volume in the Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America series

Between 1850 and 1880, thousands of women moved to New York City to study art and pursue careers as painters, designers, illustrators, and engravers. This book reconnects their accomplishments to the city's conspicuously democratic art institutions, its burgeoning illustrated press, and the prevailing aesthetic ideal known as the Unity of Art.

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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

Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange--Now Available

Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange: Comparative Exegesis in Context
Edited by Natalie B. Dohrmann and David Stern
376 pages | 6 x 9 | 7 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4074-0 | $65.00 | £42.50
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

Biblical interpretation is not simply study of the Bible's meaning. This volume focuses on signal moments in the histories of scriptural interpretation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the ancient period to the early modern, and shows how deeply intertwined these religions have always been.

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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.

Marriage and Violence--Now Available

Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy
Frances E. Dolan
248 pages | 6 x 9 | 1 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4075-7 | $47.50 | £31.00

Marriage is often described as a melding of two people into one. But what--or who--must be lost, fragmented, or buried in that process? Dolan reveals the contradiction that lies at the very heart of modern marriage. We have inherited from early modern England a model of marriage, she contends, so flawed that its logical consequence is conflict.

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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.

Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City--Now Available

Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City
Colin Gordon
304 pages | 7 x 10 | 78 color illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4070-2 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Politics and Culture in Modern America series

Mapping Decline, illustrated with more than 75 full-color maps, traces the ways private real estate restrictions, local planning and zoning, federal housing policies, and urban renewal encouraged "white flight" and urban decline in St. Louis, Missouri.

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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.

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.

Place and Memory in the Singing Crane Garden--Now Available

Place and Memory in the Singing Crane Garden
Vera Schwarcz
296 pages | 6 x 9 | 44 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4100-6 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture series

The Singing Crane Garden in northwest Beijing has been the site of several important and cataclysmic events in modern Chinese history. In this poetic and highly personal study of memory, trauma, and cultural renewal, Schwarcz brings to life the complex history of a richly layered corner of China's much traversed yet little known cultural landscape.

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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.