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.

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.

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.

Blum Lecture Available Online

In a post titled "Du Bois in the Lone Star State 2.0", The Bald Blogger has made a recent lecture by Edward J. Blum, author of  W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, available on line. In this talk, "The Noose and the Cross: Race, Religion, and the Redemption of Violence in the Works of W. E. B. Du Bois," (a 53.5 MB mp3) Blum discusses the image of the Black Jesus that developed in the United States in response to racial oppression.

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.

A Newsweek Web Exclusive with Edward J. Blum

A recent Newsweek Web article opens with the following line:

As Sen. Barack Obama deals with the fallout of controversial remarks by his pastor, a noted historian explains how the Rev. Jeremiah Wright came to say what he did.

That historian is Edward J. Blum, author of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet. Here's an excerpt from the interview:

NEWSWEEK: You've said that African-American church leaders have taken America's Christian values and turned them against the nation's practitioners of racial discrimination, violence and imperialism for hundreds of years. When and how did this tradition begin?

Edward J. Blum: It began even before the United States became the United States, during the slave trade. Throughout slavery, African-Americans used the Bible to challenge their enslavement. Olaudah Equiano, a slave who was later freed, wrote a narrative juxtaposing the Christianity of the slaveholders vs. his own Christianity. Frederick Douglass said he hated the Christianity of whites but loved the Christianity of Christ. As Africans became Americans and embraced Christianity, they continued to turn the teachings of Jesus against whites.

Edward J. Blum puts Jeremiah Wright's Rhetoric in Context

In an HNN.us commentary, “God Damn America” in Black and White, Penn Press author and historian Edward J. Blum places the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's controversial oratory in the historical context of African American religious speech.

What is striking, historically, is that there is nothing new in Wright's sermon and how often African American perspectives on so-called American Christian nationalism are ignored. It seems that each year, at least a handful of books come out trying to discern whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Most recently, this can be seen in Steven Waldman's Liberating the Founders. But so often historians have approached the topic from the perspective of elite whites and not the people who were building the nation from its foundation, hoeing the fields and raising the cotton, washing the clothes and preparing the meals (one exception to this is David Howard-Pitney's wonderful The African-American Jeremiad). If we look closely at African American perspectives of Christian nationalism, we find the Reverend Wright firmly in a long oppositional and rhetorical tradition.

Edward J. Blum is a professor of history at San Diego State University and is the author of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet and Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898.

Read the essay in its entirety on History News Network.

The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews--Now Available

The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews
Edited by Stefani Hoffman and Ezra Mendelsohn
336 pages | 6 x 9 | 9 illus.
Cloth 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4064-1 | $55.00 | £36.00
A volume in the Jewish Culture and Contexts series

In this multidisciplinary volume, leading historians provide new understanding of a time that sent shockwaves through Jewish communities in and beyond the Russian Empire and transformed the way Jews thought about the politics of ethnic and national identity.

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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.