ENGL 249 | Dark Academia

A popular culture aesthetic whose spread has been largely facilitated by social media, Dark Academia is also a burgeoning literary (sub)genre associated with a retrospective aesthetics¿tweed jackets, ivy-covered campuses, secret societies, arcane scholarship. This course explores the literary dimensions of Dark Academia in the context of the conflicts and contradictions that continue to shape US higher education. Students consider how Dark Academic texts recast the campus as a place of secrecy, horror, even murder, and explore why colleges, boarding schools, and prep schools emerge as sites of friction in US culture. The course investigates questions of educational access, elitism, the nature of education, and the liberal arts as they manifest, at least imaginatively, on campus.