Bøger udgivet af Pennsylvania State University Press

Based on interviews and years of close interaction with more than 60 Iowa farm families, Bell answers two critical questions concerning sustainable agriculture: why some farmers are becoming sustainable farmers and why, as yet, most are not.

What did it mean for ordinary believers to live a Christian life in late antiquity? In Christians at Home, Blake Leyerle explores this question through the writings, teachings, and reception of John Chrysostom--a priest of Antioch who went on to become the bishop of Constantinople in 397 AD.Through elaborate spatial and ritual recommendations, Chrysostom advised listeners to turn their houses into churches. He preached that prayer and chant, scripture and hospitality, and even layout and furnishings would create an immersive environment with a transformational effect on a home's inhabitants. But as Leyerle shows, the actual practices and beliefs of Chrysostom's lay listeners diverged from his intentions. Unlike their preacher, the laity--who saw time as cyclical rather than linear--were neither interested in moral transformation nor concerned about the afterlife, and they were more motivated by tangible goods than by a life of monasticism. Yet they were committed to Christianity and demonstrated this by modifying Chrysostom's advice to meet their everyday experiences, often citing precedents from scripture to defend their actions. By reading these two perspectives on early Christian life through each other, Leyerle shows the clash of beliefs between Chrysostom and his lay listeners and, at the same time, highlights the shared understandings that bound them together. For both the preacher and his congregations, lived religion was necessarily rooted in practice, within which the household was a vital ritual arena, independent of clerical control. Elegantly written and convincingly argued, this study will appeal to scholars of theology, classics, and the history of Christianity in particular.

The relationship between the City of Brotherly Love and its Black residents has been complicated from the city's founding through the present day. A Black Philadelphia Reader traces this complex history in the words of Black writers who were native to, lived in, or had significant connections to the city. Featuring the works of famous authors--including W. E. B. Du Bois, Harriet Jacobs, and Sonia Sanchez--alongside lesser-known voices, this reader is an immersive and enriching composite portrait of the Black experience in Philadelphia. Through fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose, readers witness episodes of racial prejudice and gender inequality in areas like public health, housing, education, policing, criminal justice, and public transportation. And yet amid these myriad challenges, the writers convey an enduring faith, a love of family and community, and a hope that Philadelphia will fulfill its promises to its Black citizens.Thoughtfully introduced and accompanied by notes that contextualize the works and aid readers' comprehension, this book will appeal to a wide audience of Philadelphians and other readers interested in American, African American, and urban studies.

"More popular than Jesus." Despite the uproar it caused in America in 1966, John Lennon's famous assessment of the Beatles vis-à-vis religion was not far off. The Beatles did mean more to kids than the religions in which they were raised, not only in America but everywhere in the world.By all accounts, the Beatles were the most significant musical group of the twentieth century. Their albums sold in the hundreds of millions, and the press was always eager to document their activities and perspectives. And when fan appreciation morphed into worship, Beatlemania took on religious significance. Many young people around the world began to look to the Beatles--their music, their commentary, their art--for meaning in a turbulent decade. Speaking Words of Wisdom is a deep dive into the Beatles' relationship to religion through the lenses of philosophy, cultural studies, music history, and religious studies. Chapters explore topics such as religious life in Liverpool, faith among individual band members, why and how India entered the Beatles' story, fan worship/deification, and the Beatles' long-lasting legacy. In the 1960s, the Beatles facilitated a reevaluation of our deepest values. The story of how the Beatles became modern-day sages is an important case study for the ways in which consumers make culturally and religiously significant meaning from music, people, and events.In addition to the editor, the contributors to this book include David Bedford, Kenneth Campbell, John Covach, Melissa Davis, Anthony DeCurtis, Mark Duffett, Scott Freer, Murray Leeder, Sean MacLeod, Grant Maxwell, Christiane Meiser, and Eyal Regev.

"A study of the popular appeal of the cult of Soviet victory in World War II and the collective incapacity to reckon with the Soviet state terror in Putin's Russia. Illustrates how appeals to family memory energize habits of remembrance acquired through exposure to films, architecture, rituals, and digital archives"--

In Orthodox Judaism, Halacha--the legal code derived from the Torah and the Talmud--constructs and determines Jewish life, informing not only practices of prayer and holiday observance but also financial behavior, personal relationships, and gender roles. Given the central importance of rabbinical Halachic guidance for everyday Jewish life, the unregulated spaces of the internet have posed a critical challenge to Orthodox communities in recent decades, particularly regarding norms around gender and sex. In Keeping Women in Their Digital Place, Ruth Tsuria explores how Orthodox Jewish communities in the United States and Israel have used "digital enclaves"--online safe havens created specifically for their denominations--to renegotiate traditional values in the face of taboo discourse encountered online. Combining a personal narrative with years of qualitative analysis, Tsuria examines how discussions in blogs and forums and on social media navigate issues of modesty, dating, marriage, intimacy, motherhood, and feminism. Unpacking the complexity of religious uses of the internet, Tsuria shows how the participatory qualities of digital spaces have been used both to challenge accepted norms and--more pervasively--to reinforce traditional and even extreme attitudes toward gender and sexuality.Original and engaging, this book will appeal to media, feminist, and religious studies scholars and students, particularly those interested in religion in the digital age and Orthodox Jewish communities.

"An English translation of recorded depositions by men arrested for sodomy or pederasty in eighteenth-century Paris, exploring complex questions about sources, patterns, and meanings in the history of sexuality"--

Explores Rene Girard's mimetic theory and repurposes it to invent a post-Christian "theorhetoric," a new way of speaking to, for, and especially about God. Advocates a rhetoric of meekness that conscientiously refuses rivalry, actively exploits tradition through complicit invention, and boldly seeks a holiness free of exclusionary violence.

"Investigates how the mineral mining company Rio Tinto constructs rhetorical personae in the places it operates and transforms environments, communities, and entire landscapes"--

"Celebrates insects, their crucial role in our ecosystems, and people working to preserve biodiversity"--

Located at the confluence of the north and west branches of the Susquehanna River, Shamokin was a significant historical settlement in the region that became Pennsylvania. By the time the Moravians arrived to set up a mission in the 1740s, Shamokin had been a site of intertribal commerce and refuge for the Native peoples of Pennsylvania for several centuries. It served first as a Susquehannock, then a Shawnee, and then a primarily Lenape settlement and trading post, overseen by the Oneida leader and diplomat Shikellamy. Cultures at the Susquehanna Confluence is an annotated translation of the diaries documenting the Moravian mission to the area. Unlike other missions of the time, the Moravians at Shamokin integrated their work and daily life into the diverse cultures they encountered, demonstrating an unusual compromise between the Church's missionary impetus and the needs of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. The diaries counter the dominant vision of the area around Shamokin as a sinister place, revealing instead a nexus of vibrant cultural exchange where women and men speaking Lenape, Mohican, English, and German collaborated in the business of survival at a pivotal time.The Shamokin diaries, which until now existed only in manuscript form in difficult-to-read German script in the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, allow today's readers to experience the Susquehanna confluence and the rich intercultural exchanges that took place there between Europeans and Native Americans.

Situates Chaucer's proverbs in their premodern cultural and intellectual contexts, arguing that Chaucer places proverbs at the center of the interpretive possibilities the Canterbury Tales extends to its readers.

"Explores the origins of modern anthropology in the European Enlightenment, and how it was intertwined with a complex history of colonialism and racism"--

Examines the emergence and stabilization of the barricade as a symbol of revolution in mid-nineteenth-century France.

An interpretation of architecture and urbanism in seventeenth-century Isfahan, Iran, through the analytical lens of urban experience.

Explores the transformative shift in nineteenth-century Chinese art, where artists used touch to establish a genuine connection with the past, challenge stagnant artistic norms, and foster deeper human connections.

An examination of Leo Strauss's 1948 notebook and other writings on the Euthyphro, Plato's dialogue on piety, using close analysis and line-by-line commentary.

Examines how fragile and decaying artworks transformed the relation between art, time, and value in eighteenth-century France.

Explores the cultural and religious significance of a series artworks painted onto the walls of the Tunisian city of Qayrawa n by women artists in the late nineteenth century.

A collection of essays examining the motivations and (sometimes) shared beliefs that led collectors to assemble significant holdings of American art in the nineteenth century.

Explores the author's career and evolution as a photographer during the turbulent 1960s, including his experimental photographs of some of the most significant concerts and artists in rock history.

Investigates the intersecting histories of tattooing, branding, stigmata, baptismal and beauty marks, and the wounds and scars borne by early modern men and women. Examines these forms of dermal marking as manifestations of a powerful and ubiquitous material practice.

Explores stereotyping and electrotyping in U.S. literature and history. Examines how printers, typefounders, authors, and publishers managed the transition as new technologies displaced printing traditions of the early nineteenth century.

Examines the life and work of writer and political activist Georg Forster (1754-1794), a participant in Captain Cook's second voyage and one of the leading figures in the Mainz Republic.

Argues for the importance of public higher education and the work of teaching and emphasizes the shared ethical responsibilities that underpin the connections between teachers and students.

"Reconstructs Kenneth Burke's drafting and revision process for A Rhetoric of Motives and The War of Words, placing Burke's work in historical context and revealing his reliance on the concept of myth"--

Explores tactics that affirm, support, and even protect those who are the victims of hate speech while fostering democratic deliberation among those committed to combating hate.

Focuses on the ways in which Christianity has become an integral part of Xiamen, a southeastern Chinese city profoundly influenced by western missionaries. Illustrates the complexities of memory and mission in shaping the city's cultural landscape, church-state dynamics, and global aspirations.

A collection of essays exploring medieval rape culture, survivors' speech, and female subjectivity in a late medieval lyric genre known as the pastourelle as well as in related literary works.

Reassesses the genre of epideictic rhetoric from antiquity to the Renaissance by looking at a series of texts that exploit the potential of praise to undermine consensus and to challenge the normative values of society. The authors covered range from Isocrates, Plato, and Aristotle to Erasmus, Machiavelli, and Montaigne