Welcome to 2017! With the new year in full swing, we've begun releasing our Spring 2017 books (with a few late arrivals from Fall 2016 in the mix as well). Take a look below at books that range from a biography of a noted American historical figure to a literary-historical analysis of the political implications of theater, and beyond! With titles in Early American Studies, Anthropology, Public Policy, and Medieval and Renaissance Studies, among others, this diverse slate of releases offers something for scholars and readers of many backgrounds and interests. Enjoy!
Jump to: Featured Titles | American History | Ancient Studies | Anthropology | Early American Studies | Economics | Literature | Medieval and Renaissance Studies | Public Policy | Religious and Jewish Studies | University of Pennsylvania Museum Titles
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FEATURED TITLES
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"More than a century and a half after his death, John James Audubon—flamboyant, intense, garrulous, insecure, and yet gifted beyond measure—remains one of the most compelling figures in American history. In this fine new biography, Gregory Nobles brings 'the American Woodsman' back to full, vivid life, capturing the artist's many facets as Audubon himself captured the essence of his beloved birds."—Scott Weidensaul, author of Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding In John James Audubon: The Nature of the American Woodsman, Gregory Nobles shows that one of Audubon's greatest creations was himself. Nobles explores the central irony of Audubon's true nature: the man who took so much time and trouble to depict birds so carefully left us a bold but deceptive picture of himself. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 352 pages | 6 x 9 | 11 color, 14 b/w illus. |
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"An insightful and incisive history of cultural responses to aging from the 1950s to the present. No previous author has examined so thoughtfully or thoroughly the medical, economic, and political discourse surrounding aging in our youth-oriented yet graying society."—Steven Mintz, author of The Prime of Life: A History of American Adulthood Aging in America traces the story of aging over the course of the last half century, demonstrating our culture's negative attitudes toward a natural and inevitable human process and offering a deep understanding of the subject's past in order to help anticipate its future. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 208 pages | 6 x 9 |
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Praise for Craig Williamson's translations "These are modern renderings with bite and muscle, full of chewy sounds to delight any ear or voice, entering the mute reader's eye and resounding within: at times filling a raucous hall, at times gently whispering into an interior fold of woe, of memory. In these resonant spaces we hear again the scop's voice."—Benjamin Bagby, performer of Beowulf and director of the medieval music ensemble Sequentia At long last we have Craig Williamson's beautiful and haunting translations of all of the Old English poems into modern strong-stress, alliterative verse, along with his introductions, his essay on translation, and noted medievalist Tom Shippey's introduction on the literary scope and vision of these timeless poems. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 1248 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 |
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"Luxurious Citizens offers a bold new history of American civic culture between the Revolution and the Civil War. Skillfully moving between the learned treatises of political economists and the everyday desires of shoppers, Cohen rethinks enduring questions of capitalism, citizenship, and governance through the crucial lens of consumerism."—Seth Rockman, Brown University Luxurious Citizens traces the ways in which Americans tied consumer desire to the national interest between 1789 and 1865 and reveals how the nation transformed individual desires for goods into an index of civic worth, placing unbridled consumption at the heart of their modern political economy. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 296 pages | 6 x 9 | 16 illus. |
John James Audubon: The Nature of the American Woodsman
Aging in America: A Cultural History
The Complete Old English Poems
Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-Century AmericaAMERICAN HISTORY
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"An invaluable collection that advances important arguments while looking at the big picture of how American media, politics, and policy intersect. Media Nation promises to become a key text in the growing canon of modern American media history and political communication studies."—Victor Pickard, University of Pennsylvania Media Nation brings together some of the most exciting voices in media and political history to present fresh perspectives on the role of mass media in the evolution of modern American politics. Together, these contributors offer a field-shaping work that aims to bring the media back to the center of scholarship modern American history. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 272 pages | 6 x 9 | 4 illus. |
Media Nation: The Political History of News in Modern AmericaANCIENT STUDIES
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"This book comes at a timely moment. Its publication will help to enhance the profile and prominence of Boiotian studies."—Hans Beck, McGill University Boiotia in the Fourth Century B.C. works from the premise that the traditional picture of hegemony and great men tells only a partial story. The volume's essays present exciting new perspectives based on recent archaeological work and the discovery of new material evidence. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 248 pages | 6 x 9 | 38 illus. |
Boiotia in the Fourth Century B.C.ANTHROPOLOGY
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"Deeply poignant. An eloquently written and altogether fascinating read about how violence is lived in multiple temporal registers in Lebanon, and how both remembering past and anticipating future violence critically shape lived experience in the present."—Lara Deeb, Scripps College War Is Coming is an ethnographic study that sheds light on the everyday conversations, practices, and experiences of people in Lebanon who live in between moments of political violence, remember past wars, and anticipate future turmoil. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 | 20 illus. |
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"Shahram Khosravi's elegant new book weaves together his two substantive areas—urban Iranian youth culture and migration and border studies—to narrate stories of social lives carved out of multiple precarities, ever-present waitings, but also, the need to hope. Dispensing with facile dichotomies that caricature contemporary Iran, Khosravi's rich and granular storytelling breathes life, in all of its complexity and contradiction, into depictions of Iran's most vulnerable populations."—Arzoo Osanloo, University of Washington Drawing on extensive ethnographic engagement with youth in Tehran and Isfahan as well as with migrant workers in rural areas, Shahram Khosravi weaves a tapestry from individual stories, government reports, statistics, and cultural analysis to depict how Iranians react to the experience of precarity and the possibility of hope. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 | 6 illus. |
War Is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon
Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in IranEARLY AMERICAN STUDIES
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"Guasco has done terrific work here, laying a strong foundation for future research. . . . A welcome addition to the literature on American slavery."—American Historical Review Michael Guasco traces the broad spectrum of ways slavery shaped the way Englishmen and Anglo-Americans thought about and interacted with the world even before the rise of plantation-based economies. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 328 pages | 6 x 9 | 8 illus. |
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"An important contribution that will appeal to a broad audience of scholars who have an interest in the history of entanglements, Africa, Europe, the Atlantic, gender, power relations, race and society."—Itinerario Examining five generations of marriages between African women and European men in a Gold Coast slave trading port, Daughters of the Trade uncovers the vital role interracial relationships played in the production of racial discourse and the increasing stratification of the early modern Atlantic world. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 288 pages | 6 x 9 | 17 illus. |
ECONOMICS
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"The book Agriculture and the Rural Economy in Pakistan: Issues, Outlooks, and Policy Priorities successfully traces the historical evolution of public policy on food security, agriculture, and the rural economy in Pakistan and provides a detailed analysis of the factors underlying the multidimensional nature of the current situation. The research-based insights and recommendations contained in this book are invaluable for researchers and policy makers in Pakistan. This book is a fine example of the International Food Policy Research Institute's mission to support countries with relevant policy research for effective decision making."—Sartaj Aziz, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Can the Pakistan's agricultural sector and rural economy once again play a significant role in growth and development? Agriculture and the Rural Economy in Pakistan: Issues, Outlooks, and Policy Priorities identifies several measures that can promote agricultural productivity growth as well as wider economic and social development. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 560 pages | 6 x 9 | 65 illus. |
Agriculture and the Rural Economy in Pakistan: Issues, Outlooks, and Policy PrioritiesLITERATURE
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"As Lévi-Strauss said of cats, the theater 'is good to think with,' especially in moments of social stress and trauma, and Lisa A. Freeman demonstrates just how useful it can be in five meticulously researched case studies. Her book represents an impressive labor of research and writing, chock full of new material in every chapter."—Joseph Roach, Yale University In an exploration of antitheatrical incidents from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, Lisa A. Freeman demonstrates that at the heart of antitheatrical disputes lies a struggle over the character of the body politic that governs a nation and the bodies public that could be said to represent that nation. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 376 pages | 6 x 9 | 24 illus. |
Antitheatricality and the Body PublicMEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
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"Scurrilous, sexy, stupid, satirical, scatological, side-splitting, and probably something else beginning with 's,' Jody Enders's translation of twelve French farces is a real discovery that goes a long way to readjusting our perception of the Middle Ages. Enders is a great champion of comedy at its most vulgar and hilarious. She points out that however silly or banal these farces may appear to us, they nonetheless confront the real controversies of their day over the law, politics, religion, social order, or the battle of the sexes. Thoroughly grounded in her academic approach to the subject, Enders nevertheless writes with liveliness and humor and wit. She is unafraid to reference modern comedy in her translations and insists on the primacy of performance in assessing these comedies from half a millennium ago."—Terry Jones, on Enders's Farce of the Fart Crafted with a wit and contemporary sensibility that make them playable a millennium later, Jody Enders's translations of twelve medieval French farces take on the hilariously depressing—and depressingly hilarious—state of holy wedlock. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 552 pages | 6 x 9 | 12 illus. |
"Holy Deadlock" and Further Ribaldries: Another Dozen Medieval French Plays in Modern EnglishPUBLIC POLICY
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The Penn School of Social Policy and Practice enjoys a reputation as Penn's social justice school, for its faculty actively strives to translate the highest ideals into workable programs that better people's lives. In the wake of an election year, as Americans debate issues like immigration, crime, mass incarceration, policing, and welfare reform, and express concerns over increasing inequality, tax policy, and divisions by race, sex, and class, "SP2," as the school is colloquially known, offers its expertise in addressing the pressing matters of our day. The practical solutions on offer in this volume showcase the judgment and commitment of the school's scholars and practitioners, working to change politics from blood sport to common undertakings. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 176 pages | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | 2 illus. |
Social Policy and Social JusticeRELIGIOUS AND JEWISH STUDIES
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"As Brian Stock's books on the themes of contemplation and the history of reading are some of the most important published in this subject area, he is, as it were, his own standard. He is one of only a handful of scholars in the field of medieval studies who take the project of close reading seriously."—Rachel Fulton Brown, University of Chicago The Integrated Self is a book in which Stock continues his project of reading Augustine, and one in which he moves forward in new and perhaps unexpected directions. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 280 pages | 6 x 9 |
The Integrated Self: Augustine, the Bible, and Ancient ThoughtUNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
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The quartzite architectural block E16230 has been on display in the Penn Museum for 115 years. E16230 is one of the few large architectural pieces in the world surviving from the much-debated reign of the "heretic" king Akhenaten. This block is one of the most historically significant objects on display in the Egyptian galleries, yet it has never been analyzed or published. This volume addresses that glaring gap and provides for the first time a translation and discussion of the important texts on the object, along with analysis of the architectural evidence it provides. Full Description, Table of Contents, and More 184 pages | 8 1/2 x 11 | 8 color, 58 b/w illus. |
The Sunshade Chapel of Meritaten from the House-of-Waenre of AkhenatenBook reviewers: To request a press copy of a Penn Press book, send your name, shipping address, and the title of your publication to glamm@upenn.edu.
Educators: To request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.
