![]() Reining in the rich and powerful is hard enough-even more so when they’ve been given supernatural powers to play with. High school drop-out Alex Stern is granted a free ride to Yale in exchange for using her ability to see ghosts to aid Lethe House, the secret organization tasked with preventing the occult practices of Yale’s other societies from getting out of hand. In this novel, Bardugo takes a fantastical approach to the very real secret societies at Yale University. Reading and reviewing Ninth House last year was what first brought dark academia to my attention. But when she unearths a magical text from the bowels of the Bodleian, she draws the attention of vampire and science professor Matthew Clairmont. Diana Bishop is a young scholar, determined to take a purely academic approach to alchemy rather than actually practicing the powerful magic her deceased parents were known for. A paranormal romance story between a witch and a vampire, it leaves behind the high school setting typical of YA novels in this genre and takes place instead at Oxford, with much of action occurring within Oxford’s Bodleian Library. This first book in Harkness’s All Souls trilogy came out in 2011, and I reviewed it back in 2015. The story centers on six Classics students and the murder that sours their friendship and splinters the group.Ī Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness The Secret History is set within a fictional elite liberal arts college in Vermont called Hampden College, inspired by Tartt’s own alma mater. It draws on the older tradition of the “campus novel”-a novel whose main action is set in and around the campus of a university. Tartt’s 1992 debut novel is often credited with being the foundation of this literary movement. ![]() Below are just a few examples of books that could be considered dark academia: It usually features stories set within an academic institution, and the “dark” element comes through in a mystery, thriller, or horror plot. Because, apart from being an aesthetic and perhaps even a lifestyle or subculture, dark academia is a budding genre of literature. And while that type of nuance may not always come through in an Instagram post, you can see it in much of the writing that has come out of dark academia. But dark academia can also be used to criticize or reimagine such institutions and lifestyles. The trend has been criticized for glamorizing these institutions-which have so often been used as tools of privilege and oppression-and for aspiring to imitate a particular upper-class European lifestyle that poor or marginalized members of society would have been excluded from. More specifically, though, the form of academia generally explored here is the type of liberal arts education that the literary greats of the last few centuries would have experienced, with a focus on literature, philosophy, and Classical studies. ![]() Wikipedia defines dark academia as “a social media aesthetic and subculture concerned with higher education, writing/poetry, the arts, and classic Greek and Gothic architecture.” As the name suggests, academia is at the heart of this concept, particularly the Western world’s most prestigious institutions, such as Oxford, Cambridge, and America’s Ivy League schools, as well as the prep schools that feed into them. ![]() But is there something more to dark academia than just visually appealing imagery with which to decorate one’s social media presence? Photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash Though the term has only come into popular use in recent years, perusing an image search is enough to quickly give you a sense of the vibe-a cohesive aesthetic that encompasses fashion, architecture, and personal paraphernalia. The phrase is generally accompanied by images in muted earthy tones and dark burgundy, often featuring cardigans with elbow patches and pleated skirts, dark wood furniture, hallowed halls of learning, and libraries full of cloth-bound tomes. “Dark academia.” You may have seen this phrase being used by bookish influencers on TikTok or tagged onto writers’ mood boards on Twitter and Instagram.
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