Gothic Riffs: Secularizing the Uncanny in the European Imaginary, 1780-1820 by Diane Long Hoeveler provides the first comprehensive study of what are called "collateral gothic" genres-operas, ballads, chapbooks, dramas, and melodramas-that emerged out of the gothic novel tradition founded by Horace Walpole, Matthew Lewis, and Ann Radcliffe. The role of religion and its more popular manifestations, superstition and magic, in the daily lives of Western Europeans were effectively undercut by the forces of secularization that were gaining momentum on every front, particularly by 1800. It is...

Orientalism is based upon the traditional belief that Western culture is superior to that of Islamic countries of the Near and Middle East. It arose in the British colonial period in the belief that the East was not civilized enough to understand itself; therefore, it had to be "interpreted" by the West for both Easterners and Westerners, thus giving rise to an "Us versus Them" dichotomy which has proved to be increasingly dangerous. As a concept, Orientalism has generated new fields of study and dynamically affected fields as diverse as anthropology, history, popular culture, and...