California Crucible–Now Available
03/15/2012
California Crucible: The Forging of Modern American Liberalism Jonathan Bell 352 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4387-1 | $47.50 | £31.00 A volume in the Politics… READ MORE
Category: American History & Studies
Remembering Lucretia Mott on International Women’s Day
03/08/2012
Lucretia Coffin Mott’s record of leadership in the women’s movement and in transatlantic abolitionism make her an ideal figure to remember on International Women’s day, even though Mott has long… READ MORE
Truth and Democracy–Now Available
03/05/2012
Truth and Democracy Edited by Jeremy Elkins and Andrew Norris 352 pages | 6 x 9 Cloth 2012 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4379-6 | $69.95 | £45.50 A volume in the Democracy,… READ MORE
This Month’s Podcast: Astounding Wonder author John Cheng on Readers, Race, and Rocket Science
03/02/2012
In the March Penn Press podcast, historian and patent-holder John Cheng discusses the early culture of popular science fiction. Cheng's new book, Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar… READ MORE
Two New Exhibits, Two New Books
This weekend, two new exhibits feature artwork connected to new and forthcoming Penn Press books. A Singular View—The Art and Words of John Paton Davies, Jr. opens Saturday, March 3… READ MORE
China Hand–Now Available
03/01/2012
China Hand: An Autobiography John Paton Davies, Jr. Foreword by Todd S. Purdum. Epilogue by Bruce Cumings 376 pages | 6 x 9 | 16 illus. Cloth 2012 | ISBN… READ MORE
Talking Douglass-like about Law–A Guest Blog Post by Jeannine Marie DeLombard
02/22/2012
Overcoming an initial reluctance to “talk ‘lawyer-like’ about law” in his early career as abolitionist orator, author, and editor, the celebrated autodidact drew on “well known rules of legal interpretation” to offer influential commentary on the U.S. Constitution and Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). This legal literacy, combined with a longstanding commitment to gender and racial equality, might have led Douglass to question the wisdom of current efforts to make personhood coterminous with humanness.
Activism After Douglass–a Guest Post by Shawn Leigh Alexander
02/21/2012
This second guest blog post in our series on Frederick Douglass considers his legacy shortly after his death. Shawn Leigh Alexander, author of An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights… READ MORE
Douglass and the Daguerreotype–a Guest Post by Marcy J. Dinius
02/20/2012
In time, Douglass became so interested in the connection between the visual arts, imagination, humanity, and progress toward liberty and justice that he wrote and delivered a set of lectures on the subject between 1861 and 1865. He began both the earlier and the later versions of his “Lecture on Pictures” with an extended consideration of the daguerreotype. After being daguerreotyped multiple times in the 1840s and 1850s, the former slave had become a man in his daguerreian portrait. His lectures suggest that if his audiences were to look at his or any other African American’s image and reflect on its likeness to their own, the daguerreotype would show them the reality of blacks’ humanity and awaken them to their own.
Seneca Possessed–Now in Paperback
02/09/2012
Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic Matthew Dennis 328 pages | 6 x 9 | 16 illus. Cloth 2010 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4226-3 | $45.00 |… READ MORE
