Written by: Kaitlin Anderson
I recently took a course which focused on an increasingly popular — and controversial — literary subgenre: dark academia. Originally an aesthetic popularized on Tumblr, dark academia gained wider recognition as it swept through social media and bookstores during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lists of books said to embody the aesthetic began circulating on platforms like TikTok, and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History was retroactively designated as the blueprint for all other dark academia literature. But what exactly are the hallmarks of this genre, and what is its utility?
Dark academia is a type of campus novel, often taking place at real or fictitious colleges in places like New England or the UK. Following the precedent set by Tumblr and The Secret History, the aesthetic elements of the genre often include old libraries, dated technology, moody vintage fashion, and murder. The characters are almost always studying humanities subjects like language, writing, or the classics. It’s all very dramatic and intellectual.
A common critique of the genre is that it’s obsessed with the Western canon and glorifies the educational environments of Europe and the United States. Romanticizing higher education can also be seen as morally fraught in a time when people are growing more critical of its institutional abuses. However, the class I took offered a way of approaching the genre by looking past its marketable tropes, revealing that many of its novels actually leverage the aesthetic to interrogate those same abuses.
The class examined four books: The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Babel by R. F. Kuang, Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, and Bunny by Mona Awad. Each story took place at an institution of higher education and followed characters who were in some way othered in that environment, whether by race, gender, socio-economic status, or some combination of the three. The violence they faced as a result could take the form of physical harm or more sinister and subtle forms like discrimination, exploitation, and censorship. Some of the authors have explicitly stated that the ostracization and violence faced by these characters was inspired by their own experiences of attending prestigious academies.
Despite these novels having the aesthetic trappings of stories romanticizing Eurocentric education, they ultimately confront the racism, sexism, and classism embedded in academic institutions: the darkness in dark academia. These novels can also serve as vessels proposing ways to ameliorate such abuses. In many dark academia works, violent experiences and experiences of connection are not mutually exclusive; instead, authors present community and conscious support in collegiate settings as a means of opposing normalized violence.
Using a popular aesthetic-turned-genre to diagnose abuses in higher education can be viewed as a crucial first step towards eliminating those abuses and creating academic environments that are worthy of being romanticized. Personally, I’m a big fan of this approach. The books my classmates and I read were just as enjoyable as they were meaningful. I would wholeheartedly recommend exploring this genre, especially if you’re a college student.
Featured Image Caption: An example of an image you might find on a dark academia moodboard.