Hi hi hi. Please allow me to gush, because I read this essay and kept going “yes. yes. YES.” I share so many of your opinions. I also read The Secret History in my early teens and it sparked off an obsession that became so bad I accidentally became a classicist (in training) and my friends all call me the embodiment of dark academia. (I wrote an essay that in part dissects how I feel about that as a Black person.) But honestly, I took a Complit class last semester and we covered both the Analects and Sundiata, so I’m so grateful you mentioned both in connection with broadening the horizons of this genre. This genre is something I latched on to during an identity forming period of my life. I’m older now and I love it still, but I do see that we need to move into questioning its implications/the canons we create for it! this is phenomenal work and I’m so sorry for rambling, but thank you (x1 million times). The research you’ve done and your writing are both incredible.
This made me grin so so hard to read! I’m so glad you liked it. Is that essay on dark academia and Black identity available to read on substack? i’d read the hell out of that.
i feel so strongly that the best part of dark academia, as a genre and a subculture, is how it romanticizes expanding your mind and reading more and wider and going deeper into things, never being satisfied with knowing ‘enough’. so it feels to me like the absolute opposite of the dark academia sensibility to be satisfied with a short list of mostly male, entirely white authors. there are so many reasons to explode the canon and all of them make someone more ‘dark academia’ - i wish it was seen that way more widely and more young teens were taking it as an inspiration to learn new languages and read globally while their young squishy brains are still capable of absorbing languages like a sponge
Hiii thank you for replying! It’s a part of my larger essay on classics which is available on my Substack, yes!
I 100% agree with you. Romanticizing learning and investment in learning/bodies of literature definitely make up two huge things I love about dark academia. You make such a good point when you say complacency with a limited canon is so unlike the genre! I think more often than not we bring our own idea of the academy to the way we engage with the genre, so you’re absolutely right. It’s really cool to see people around my age develop an interest in that widening of scope. I learn Latin, and will likely learn Greek one day, but im interested in far eastern and Slavic languages and I’m currently learning Japanese, Mandarin, and Russian! That interest has led me to see so much beauty in learning as a globalist thing, which I agree is more dark academia than a restrictive white male Platonic ideal. I really like the phrase “explode the canon.”
I absolutely loved that essay, you can tell by how I had to stop myself at only restacking three paragraphs lol
I’m completely there with you on the constant desire to learn more and expand MORE. my language knowledge is a bit regrettably trapped in the british isles, which probably isn’t something i’d do again if I could go back to when I was younger, but that’s how the oxford course was structured. even within the UK I’m going to be learning cornish and welsh for my phd and there’s so much diversity and depth within just one small island. in my masters i got to study the global middle ages and look at translated texts from arabic and chinese and it felt like suddenly realising the sky stretched infinitely into space above you, there’s just SO MUCH there
HAHA, thank you so so much for doing that!! It means more than you know, I’m so grateful <3
But I feel you! I grew up in the British school system before transitioning to the American system and in both I feel like there’s very limited exposure to non-Western languages. It can be a bit stifling to have to learn on your own. But that’s so cool you’re going to be learning Cornish and Welsh! both are so beautiful, and I wish you luck! Your masters sounds fascinating (!!!) and I know just the feeling you mean. My complit class made me feel a bit like that, and it was just an intro course, so I can’t imagine what your masters must have felt like. Learning about life and literature from other parts of the world makes you feel so connected and so dizzyingly out of your depth, all at once!! and the potency of that feeling is so heady and hopeful and very dark academic to me
Ooh, I hung out for a while with a super interesting bunch of medievalists. Eileen Joy and friends. Anthroplogy and mediaeval studies have so many interesting convos to hold. (Rooted in that shared secret knowledge that *human nature* - hohoho - doesn't mean nearly as much as people in western late modernity think it does. We're both disciplines that look sideways at all of that). https://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/?m=1
Your post was a such a fun and smart read about this genre! I’m currently reading The Secret History for the first time and am loving it. Another book I thought of that I was obsessed with years ago and that I think reflects dark academic aspects is Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. A rhetorical question I have is what (maybe especially millennial?) interest in (the creation of?) this genre owes to bigger editorial successes and blockbusters like the Harry Potter series or His Dark Materials? The part where you talk about adult vs. YA got me thinking about that!
There’s so much more to be said on this I keep coming across cool takes in the comments and wishing I’d made the essay double the length! I really need to reread the historian, what a fantastic book
This is so well-researched! You put together in a beautiful way a lot of thoughts I had that were completely scattered and disorganised in my brain, and you raised a lot of other interesting points, so thank you for this. I agree that what we go on to say about dark academia is the most important thing, and that the discussion about oppression within academia has just begun. It’s so important that more books keep exploring the way racism is deeply rooted in academia (as a white person studying Classics and seeing how fascists try to co-opt them, it’s something I know I must always keep in mind).
One thing I would love to finally read (… or write) is dark academia books that center disability as well, and the way being or becoming disabled has such an impact on one’s education and place within academia. The only book I can think of is All’s Well, but I’m not sure it’s dark academia. It’s dark and set in an academic setting, but I didn’t feel the usual “dark academia vibe”, if that makes sense.
That’s such a good point! I’d cautiously put alls well within dark academia, maybe for spurious reasons - bunny is so firmly DA that I feel other mona awad books get to be allowed in, and there’s such a strong connection between the content of the play and the way the darkness plays out.
You’re right that there’s not a lot of disability in general though, certainly not physical disability. It’s not something I’d noticed before even as a disabled person. There’s probably something quite depressing there around this aesthetic genre only noticing certain forms of beauty in its very beautiful protagonist. I can think of one book (the Latinist) with a character who’s colourblind, though that doesn’t come up much and my friend who’s colourblind found it very goofy.
I noticed it immediately, probably because I began to read dark academia books around the same period as my autism diagnosis, and then I started university right as I tried to get diagnosed for physical disabilities as well. So the struggle of accommodations, how to fit medical appointments within an academic schedule, studying with chronic pain, professors not taking anything seriously, and all that, is usually in my mind when I read DA. It’s disappointing but not surprising that the disabled student doesn’t seem like the ideal main character of this genre
It feels like there’s a lot that could be really interestingly explored there and I hope we see it more with time - alls well did a lot of really fascinating stuff and I feel like asking those same questions related to different characters, situations, subjects and institutions could yield a lot of really cool and different plots
Exactly! It has so much potential, especially since depending on the disability and the situation there are so many different possible struggles and things to explore
I'm learning so much from your posts! I had no idea what dark academia might be and had never heard of moodboards (I should note here that I'm over twice your age), and in fact am still baffled by what moodboards have to do with a literary genre. But whatever, I will now read The Secret History. Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much! I’m really interested in the ways internet trends breed culture - on the face of it its really odd that a moodboard constructing an aesthetic idea could start a literary genre off, but then it does!
Excellent post! The closest I’ve come to sci-dark academia is through Connie Willis’ Oxford Time Travel series but they’re much more sci-fi historical fiction than dark academia 🤔 wonderful series nonetheless
For sci-fi Dark Academia I feel like Sofia Samatar’s most recent book The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain has the ingredients but not really the vibe, but it’s worth considering in that vein
In the three body problem physics is an important character. The book is in my opinion an exploration of the philosophy of science. The book has the academic part but not the aesthetic.
ooh I’ve read that but didn’t think of it for the article. It’s interesting to me that fantasy seems to effortlessly fit the aesthetic while sci fi doesn’t - perhaps it says something about gothic-ness and the humanities being more naturally aligned than the sciences? it makes me want to read some science DA now
Space feudalism is a main trope of space operas. In suneater series the main characters make reference to greek mythology and ancient history. He is a romantic from a nobel family so the perfect dark academia protagonist. The society in red rising is obsessed with the roman empire and have modeled themselves after that.
Frankenstein is a sci-fi DA novel
Yeah you have to think harder to find connections to the DA aesthetic.
For DA science I could only think of biopics.
DA science would be Oppenheimer, a beautiful mind, imitation game and hidden figures.
I think math and physics would fir well with the DA aesthetic.
I would love to read a DA novel with a mathematician as protagonist.
dark academia sci-fi is certainly something i’ll have to ponder… i can think of several books that tackle similar themes as classic dark academia novels, but none of them feel close enough to dark academia for me to consider them as such. perhaps shiny spaceships offset the inky darkness of space. the closest i’d consider is hyperion by dan simmons, though it certainly falls into the pre-dark academia category since it has very little to do with academia but is a delightful spin on the canterbury tales
That’s really interesting - I’ve not read that but I feel like I really have to now, particularly if it’s medievalist. It’s an interesting question to me when there’s so much grim introspective sci fi but it doesn’t seem to edge at all into the dark academic
Emily, thank you so much for taking the time to research and write your findings so eloquently. Extra thank you for sharing it with us. I also read The Secret History when I was young and went on to read other books that also fall into the genre. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that it is a genre, and defining it as such will facilitate having the important conversations you mention. Of the definitions you shared the one that speaks to me most, because I love the implications, is your second point under the ‘academia’ definition. I would love to see more of the effects different fields of studies could have on the characters. Also, your point about the lack of work that could be categorized as ‘sci-fi dark academia’ sparked an idea in my head to rework a sci-fi short story I wrote last year. Can’t wait to read your thoughts on romantasy!
I’ve been thinking about how romantasy and ‘Instagram’ poetry have helped keep the publishing industry going and whether that’s a good thing.
"The role of race and the empire in dark academia has been discussed a good bit but the conversation isn’t done." We've hardly started. Looking forward to being part of it (there's so much to say). Thanks for this roundup. Been reading everything I can that's set in a university, as part of my process while I write / edit my WIP (On Campus). The melodrama and romantic / gothic vibes of so much of this body of work started to get mightily on my nerves. And I then axed my main plotline - mystery, jeopardy - so that I'd not drift into that space. I'm feeling like we need to think more about whiteness and specifically about tropes of *young white woman in peril* a bit more critically. Barkworth's The Drownings was, for me, an awkward and seemingly unselfconscious step too far down that road. I've gone back to UK comical/satirical campus novels for an infusion of something else: the absurdity of academic life, the weirdness of those of us who are in it, etc. Hmmm, that was all a bit ramble-blurt, eh? Sorry! I was excited to find something about campus novels. (Deep in the 4th round of edits to *On Campus* and I probably need to get out more).
Please please please post the book lists 🙏 I loved reading this
I’ll start it cooking and get it posted asap!
Hi hi hi. Please allow me to gush, because I read this essay and kept going “yes. yes. YES.” I share so many of your opinions. I also read The Secret History in my early teens and it sparked off an obsession that became so bad I accidentally became a classicist (in training) and my friends all call me the embodiment of dark academia. (I wrote an essay that in part dissects how I feel about that as a Black person.) But honestly, I took a Complit class last semester and we covered both the Analects and Sundiata, so I’m so grateful you mentioned both in connection with broadening the horizons of this genre. This genre is something I latched on to during an identity forming period of my life. I’m older now and I love it still, but I do see that we need to move into questioning its implications/the canons we create for it! this is phenomenal work and I’m so sorry for rambling, but thank you (x1 million times). The research you’ve done and your writing are both incredible.
This made me grin so so hard to read! I’m so glad you liked it. Is that essay on dark academia and Black identity available to read on substack? i’d read the hell out of that.
i feel so strongly that the best part of dark academia, as a genre and a subculture, is how it romanticizes expanding your mind and reading more and wider and going deeper into things, never being satisfied with knowing ‘enough’. so it feels to me like the absolute opposite of the dark academia sensibility to be satisfied with a short list of mostly male, entirely white authors. there are so many reasons to explode the canon and all of them make someone more ‘dark academia’ - i wish it was seen that way more widely and more young teens were taking it as an inspiration to learn new languages and read globally while their young squishy brains are still capable of absorbing languages like a sponge
Hiii thank you for replying! It’s a part of my larger essay on classics which is available on my Substack, yes!
I 100% agree with you. Romanticizing learning and investment in learning/bodies of literature definitely make up two huge things I love about dark academia. You make such a good point when you say complacency with a limited canon is so unlike the genre! I think more often than not we bring our own idea of the academy to the way we engage with the genre, so you’re absolutely right. It’s really cool to see people around my age develop an interest in that widening of scope. I learn Latin, and will likely learn Greek one day, but im interested in far eastern and Slavic languages and I’m currently learning Japanese, Mandarin, and Russian! That interest has led me to see so much beauty in learning as a globalist thing, which I agree is more dark academia than a restrictive white male Platonic ideal. I really like the phrase “explode the canon.”
I absolutely loved that essay, you can tell by how I had to stop myself at only restacking three paragraphs lol
I’m completely there with you on the constant desire to learn more and expand MORE. my language knowledge is a bit regrettably trapped in the british isles, which probably isn’t something i’d do again if I could go back to when I was younger, but that’s how the oxford course was structured. even within the UK I’m going to be learning cornish and welsh for my phd and there’s so much diversity and depth within just one small island. in my masters i got to study the global middle ages and look at translated texts from arabic and chinese and it felt like suddenly realising the sky stretched infinitely into space above you, there’s just SO MUCH there
HAHA, thank you so so much for doing that!! It means more than you know, I’m so grateful <3
But I feel you! I grew up in the British school system before transitioning to the American system and in both I feel like there’s very limited exposure to non-Western languages. It can be a bit stifling to have to learn on your own. But that’s so cool you’re going to be learning Cornish and Welsh! both are so beautiful, and I wish you luck! Your masters sounds fascinating (!!!) and I know just the feeling you mean. My complit class made me feel a bit like that, and it was just an intro course, so I can’t imagine what your masters must have felt like. Learning about life and literature from other parts of the world makes you feel so connected and so dizzyingly out of your depth, all at once!! and the potency of that feeling is so heady and hopeful and very dark academic to me
Ooh, I hung out for a while with a super interesting bunch of medievalists. Eileen Joy and friends. Anthroplogy and mediaeval studies have so many interesting convos to hold. (Rooted in that shared secret knowledge that *human nature* - hohoho - doesn't mean nearly as much as people in western late modernity think it does. We're both disciplines that look sideways at all of that). https://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/?m=1
bookmarking this!! how cool!
Blow that fucker up! Some of you might be interested in this, from an ex colleague of mine. (I was Soc Anth, she was philosophy and religion). https://www.soas.ac.uk/decolonising-philosophy-curriculum-toolkit
Issues around decolonisation and the whiteness / class habitus of academia are overdue-ready for literary discussion.
Your post was a such a fun and smart read about this genre! I’m currently reading The Secret History for the first time and am loving it. Another book I thought of that I was obsessed with years ago and that I think reflects dark academic aspects is Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. A rhetorical question I have is what (maybe especially millennial?) interest in (the creation of?) this genre owes to bigger editorial successes and blockbusters like the Harry Potter series or His Dark Materials? The part where you talk about adult vs. YA got me thinking about that!
There’s so much more to be said on this I keep coming across cool takes in the comments and wishing I’d made the essay double the length! I really need to reread the historian, what a fantastic book
This is so well-researched! You put together in a beautiful way a lot of thoughts I had that were completely scattered and disorganised in my brain, and you raised a lot of other interesting points, so thank you for this. I agree that what we go on to say about dark academia is the most important thing, and that the discussion about oppression within academia has just begun. It’s so important that more books keep exploring the way racism is deeply rooted in academia (as a white person studying Classics and seeing how fascists try to co-opt them, it’s something I know I must always keep in mind).
One thing I would love to finally read (… or write) is dark academia books that center disability as well, and the way being or becoming disabled has such an impact on one’s education and place within academia. The only book I can think of is All’s Well, but I’m not sure it’s dark academia. It’s dark and set in an academic setting, but I didn’t feel the usual “dark academia vibe”, if that makes sense.
That’s such a good point! I’d cautiously put alls well within dark academia, maybe for spurious reasons - bunny is so firmly DA that I feel other mona awad books get to be allowed in, and there’s such a strong connection between the content of the play and the way the darkness plays out.
You’re right that there’s not a lot of disability in general though, certainly not physical disability. It’s not something I’d noticed before even as a disabled person. There’s probably something quite depressing there around this aesthetic genre only noticing certain forms of beauty in its very beautiful protagonist. I can think of one book (the Latinist) with a character who’s colourblind, though that doesn’t come up much and my friend who’s colourblind found it very goofy.
I noticed it immediately, probably because I began to read dark academia books around the same period as my autism diagnosis, and then I started university right as I tried to get diagnosed for physical disabilities as well. So the struggle of accommodations, how to fit medical appointments within an academic schedule, studying with chronic pain, professors not taking anything seriously, and all that, is usually in my mind when I read DA. It’s disappointing but not surprising that the disabled student doesn’t seem like the ideal main character of this genre
It feels like there’s a lot that could be really interestingly explored there and I hope we see it more with time - alls well did a lot of really fascinating stuff and I feel like asking those same questions related to different characters, situations, subjects and institutions could yield a lot of really cool and different plots
Exactly! It has so much potential, especially since depending on the disability and the situation there are so many different possible struggles and things to explore
Have you read the latest Jonathan Coe novel? There’s a dark academia parody in it (as well as parodies of auto-fiction and cosy crime!).
I haven’t even heard of it but it sounds like I really need to!
I really liked it, but I like all his stuff! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/12/the-proof-of-my-innocence-by-jonathan-coe-review-truss-era-satire-wrapped-in-a-caper
I'm learning so much from your posts! I had no idea what dark academia might be and had never heard of moodboards (I should note here that I'm over twice your age), and in fact am still baffled by what moodboards have to do with a literary genre. But whatever, I will now read The Secret History. Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much! I’m really interested in the ways internet trends breed culture - on the face of it its really odd that a moodboard constructing an aesthetic idea could start a literary genre off, but then it does!
Excellent post! The closest I’ve come to sci-dark academia is through Connie Willis’ Oxford Time Travel series but they’re much more sci-fi historical fiction than dark academia 🤔 wonderful series nonetheless
For sci-fi Dark Academia I feel like Sofia Samatar’s most recent book The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain has the ingredients but not really the vibe, but it’s worth considering in that vein
I shall check it out! Thank you for the recommendation!
Aaaaa need to read this right now
In the three body problem physics is an important character. The book is in my opinion an exploration of the philosophy of science. The book has the academic part but not the aesthetic.
ooh I’ve read that but didn’t think of it for the article. It’s interesting to me that fantasy seems to effortlessly fit the aesthetic while sci fi doesn’t - perhaps it says something about gothic-ness and the humanities being more naturally aligned than the sciences? it makes me want to read some science DA now
Space feudalism is a main trope of space operas. In suneater series the main characters make reference to greek mythology and ancient history. He is a romantic from a nobel family so the perfect dark academia protagonist. The society in red rising is obsessed with the roman empire and have modeled themselves after that.
Frankenstein is a sci-fi DA novel
Yeah you have to think harder to find connections to the DA aesthetic.
For DA science I could only think of biopics.
DA science would be Oppenheimer, a beautiful mind, imitation game and hidden figures.
I think math and physics would fir well with the DA aesthetic.
I would love to read a DA novel with a mathematician as protagonist.
dark academia sci-fi is certainly something i’ll have to ponder… i can think of several books that tackle similar themes as classic dark academia novels, but none of them feel close enough to dark academia for me to consider them as such. perhaps shiny spaceships offset the inky darkness of space. the closest i’d consider is hyperion by dan simmons, though it certainly falls into the pre-dark academia category since it has very little to do with academia but is a delightful spin on the canterbury tales
That’s really interesting - I’ve not read that but I feel like I really have to now, particularly if it’s medievalist. It’s an interesting question to me when there’s so much grim introspective sci fi but it doesn’t seem to edge at all into the dark academic
Emily, thank you so much for taking the time to research and write your findings so eloquently. Extra thank you for sharing it with us. I also read The Secret History when I was young and went on to read other books that also fall into the genre. Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that it is a genre, and defining it as such will facilitate having the important conversations you mention. Of the definitions you shared the one that speaks to me most, because I love the implications, is your second point under the ‘academia’ definition. I would love to see more of the effects different fields of studies could have on the characters. Also, your point about the lack of work that could be categorized as ‘sci-fi dark academia’ sparked an idea in my head to rework a sci-fi short story I wrote last year. Can’t wait to read your thoughts on romantasy!
I’ve been thinking about how romantasy and ‘Instagram’ poetry have helped keep the publishing industry going and whether that’s a good thing.
"The role of race and the empire in dark academia has been discussed a good bit but the conversation isn’t done." We've hardly started. Looking forward to being part of it (there's so much to say). Thanks for this roundup. Been reading everything I can that's set in a university, as part of my process while I write / edit my WIP (On Campus). The melodrama and romantic / gothic vibes of so much of this body of work started to get mightily on my nerves. And I then axed my main plotline - mystery, jeopardy - so that I'd not drift into that space. I'm feeling like we need to think more about whiteness and specifically about tropes of *young white woman in peril* a bit more critically. Barkworth's The Drownings was, for me, an awkward and seemingly unselfconscious step too far down that road. I've gone back to UK comical/satirical campus novels for an infusion of something else: the absurdity of academic life, the weirdness of those of us who are in it, etc. Hmmm, that was all a bit ramble-blurt, eh? Sorry! I was excited to find something about campus novels. (Deep in the 4th round of edits to *On Campus* and I probably need to get out more).