Wars are often associated with a rhetoric of renewal or new beginnings. This essay explores this claim through the lens of civil religion and a recent book by Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation, which combines Emile Durkheim with Réné Girard in proposing that modern national cohesion depends on blood sacrifice. I unpack some of the paradoxes raised by this theory of national renewal in the context of 9/11, with a special focus on the sacred status of the flag and the special attention given to uniformed serviceman in the American body politi

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This interdisciplinary collection brings together world leaders in Gothic Studies, offering dynamic new readings on popular Gothic cultural productions from the last decade. Topics covered include, but are not limited to: contemporary High Street Goth/ic fashion, Gothic performance and art festivals, Gothic popular fiction from Twilight to Shadow of the Wind, Goth/ic popular music, Goth/ic on TV and film, new trends like Steampunk, well-known icons Batman and Lady Gaga, and theorizations of popular Gothic monsters (from zombies and vampires to werewolves and ghosts) in an age of terror/ism.

e are all used to hearing about anxiety all the time: in the media, in scholarly articles, when talking with friends. Anxiety is considered the most common mental disorder in America, affecting between fifteen and thirty percent of the population. 1 My own personal way of appreciating the cultural impact of anxiety is by noting the literally hundreds of Amazon pages devoted to books about anxiety and how to treat it. One of the nice things about anxiety-for a graduate student, and for academics in general -is that it is a term that circulates as freely in everyday discourse as in scholarly articles, unlike, say, 'subjectivity,' or even 'homosocial,' which still often requires a quick gloss when dropped at the hairdresser's. With anxiety, no translation is required. Everyone understands it more or less: a chronic state of tension, nervousness, or apprehension. One of the less nice things about anxiety-for a graduate student-is that he or she probably feels it every day as part of the normal graduate school experience, worrying about grades, qualifying exams, the job market, the future of funding for humanities research, and so on.

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