The historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States had a significant impact on both America and the world at large. By voting an African American into the highest office, those who elected Obama did not necessarily look past race, but rather didn't let race prevent them for casting their ballots in his favor. In addition to reflecting the changing political climate, Obama's presidency also spurred a cultural shift, notably in music, television, and film. In Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema, David Garrett Izzo presents a varied collection of essays that examine films produced since the 2008 election. The contributors to these essays comment on a number of films in which race and "otherness" are pivotal elements. In addition to discussing such films as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Black Dynamite, The Blind Side, The Butler, Django Unchained, The Help, and Invictus, this collection also includes essays that probe racial elements in The Great Gatsby, The Hunger Games, and The Mist. The volume concludes with several essays that examine the 2013 Academy Award winner for best picture, 12 Years a Slave. Though Obama's election may have been the main impetus for a resurgence of black films, this development is a bit more complicated. Moviemakers have long responded to the changing times, so it is inevitable that the Obama presidency would spark an increase in films that comment, either subtly or overtly, on the current cultural climate. By looking at the issue these films address, Movies in the Age of Obama will be of value to film scholars, of course, but also to those interested in other disciplines, including history, politics, and cultural studies.

The historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States had a significant impact on both America and the world at large. By voting an African American into the highest office, those who elected Obama did not necessarily look past race, but rather didn't let race prevent them for casting their ballots in his favor. In addition to reflecting the changing political climate, Obama's presidency also spurred a cultural shift, notably in music, television, and film. In Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema, David Garrett Izzo presents a varied collection of essays that examine films produced since the 2008 election. The contributors to these essays comment on a number of films in which race and "otherness" are pivotal elements. In addition to discussing such films as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Black Dynamite, The Blind Side, The Butler, Django Unchained, The Help, and Invictus, this collection also includes essays that probe racial elements in The Great Gatsby, The Hunger Games, and The Mist. The volume concludes with several essays that examine the 2013 Academy Award winner for best picture, 12 Years a Slave. Though Obama's election may have been the main impetus for a resurgence of black films, this development is a bit more complicated. Moviemakers have long responded to the changing times, so it is inevitable that the Obama presidency would spark an increase in films that comment, either subtly or overtly, on the current cultural climate. By looking at the issue these films address, Movies in the Age of Obama will be of value to film scholars, of course, but also to those interested in other disciplines, including history, politics, and cultural studies.

The year is 1633. Tensions are running high in the small German city of Klosterheim. The Thirty Years' War rages on, as the Emperor contends with invading Swedish forces, and, closer to home, the marauding robber chieftain Holkerstein and his armies threaten to destroy the town and kill every man, woman, and child in Klosterheim.

But not all the townspeople's anxieties originate from without: within the city, too, there is danger at every turn, as the usurper prince tightens his grip on the town and targets those, like the brave Count St Aldenheim, the virtuous Maximilian, and the lovely Paulina, who pose a threat to his reign. And when a mysterious, disguised figure known only as The Masque appears on the scene, apparently murdering and kidnapping Klosterheim's residents with impunity, terror runs rampant. Who can he be, and who is his next victim? The evil prince is determined to find out, and he devises an elaborate trap in the form of a masked ball, but little does he realize that The Masque is always one step ahead of him, plotting a deadly and inscrutable vengeance

"Klosterheim; or, The Masque" was first published in 1832, and it reveals De Quincey's love for the Gothic novels of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, which he had read in his youth. It is also, as Ed Cameron discusses in his introduction to this edition, inextricably linked to De Quincey's theories on aesthetics and murder, as most famously expressed in his essay "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts."

This book uses clinical psychoanalytic theory to illustrate how early British Gothic fiction reveals undercurrents of psychopathological behavior. It demonstrates that psychological insights gained from Gothic romance anticipate the later scientific findings of psychoanalysis. Chapters consider the division of the Gothic novel's critical reception between allegory and romance; how the structure of early British Gothic romance parallels Freud's notion of the uncanny; the genre's perverse origins in Walpole's The Castle of Otranto; sexual differentiation and the parallel between development of Gothic romance an development of the psyche; Ann Radcliffe and the terror of hysteria; Matthew Lewis and obsessional neurosis; and the confusion between self and other in Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.