Penn Press Log

Demacopoulos, Author of The Invention of Peter, Discusses the Papacy on ABC News

George E. Demacopoulos, associate professor of theology at Fordham University and author of The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity, spoke with ABC News on the future of the papacy and the Roman Catholic church after the resignation of Pope Benedict.

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Bombshell: Women and Terrorism Author Mia Bloom on WPSU Tonight

Mia Bloom, author of Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, is tonight's guest on WPSU's Conversations from Penn State.

"Once a rare and shocking occurrence, the number of females engaging in terrorism in is on the rise. Who are these women and what is driving them to kill? Mia Bloom, a leading expert on suicide terrorism, answers these questions and more."

The program will air at 9:00 p.m. You can also watch it online at www.wpsu.org, or on YouTube.

Medieval Monday: Ruth Mazo Karras on a Case of Medieval Unmarriage

Ruth Mazo Karras, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota, discusses the case of an unmarried couple in fifteenth-century Paris. The incident is one of many in her latest Penn Press book, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages. The legal and religious details of this extramarital union are particular to the Middle Ages, yet the likely motivations of the people involved seem timeless.

Those in search of simple, old fashioned models of love and marriage might be disappointed by some of the realities of medieval coupling. "Tradition is always invented," says Karras, who reminds us that the traditional marriage that people in the twenty-first century have invented for themselves is not really that similar to the state of matrimony in the Middle Ages.

Karras is the author of several books, including From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe and coeditor of Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe. She is also coeditor of the journal Gender & History and Series Editor for The Middle Ages Series published by Penn Press.