Once considered escapist or closely linked to fantasy, the Gothic genre (or mode, as scholars increasingly call it) has recently begun to be explored for its material concerns and engagement with real-world matters. This special issue of Text Matters features essays that develop this line of inquiry, focusing on how the Gothic attempts to matter in concrete and critical ways, and maps its rhetorical and aesthetic strategies of intervention and narration, affect and influence. Chapters include work on the French Revolution and the representation of the female body, Frankenstein, colonialism and museum displays in the 19th century, disembodied hands, Native American vampires, neoliberal anxieties in horror film, gender, and post-industrial culture.