Elspeth Wilson, author of These Mortal Bodies, discusses what attracts us to dark academia and what actually goes into making a work part of the genre with fellow contributors from the upcoming anthology These Dreaming Spires.
Perhaps more so than any other genre, Dark Academia’s reach extends far beyond literature. It reaches into other art forms of course, with Saltburn being one of the most-talked about films of recent years, but it has its own aesthetic too. The term Dark Academia doesn’t just conjure images of soaring spires and gothic architecture, but also of a certain kind of person – usually an outsider looking into an elite world alongside the beautiful, self-possessed people they hope to emulate. And while it’s not a new genre, with roots in classics like Brideshead Revisited, it has enjoyed a huge surge in popularity in recent years, particularly since the pandemic, when . This popularity has seen the genre branch in different directions, with what was once a genre centred on contemporary campus novels gaining an association with the fantastical and magical, too, through works such as RF Kuang’s Babel. So what unites the different elements of the genre? And what draws both readers and writers to the settings of hallowed halls time and again?
As class inequality increases in many countries and living costs continue to rise, it might seem paradoxical that there’s a fascination with rich people behaving badly and elite worlds that fewer and fewer of us can hope to inhabit. But it’s this glittering quality combined with a sense of decay beneath that draws so many readers to Dark Academia. As Kit Mayquist, author of Tripping Arcadia, says, “Dark academia toes the line between admiring wealth and destroying that admiration through exposing the corruptive nature of it. In other words, what is arguably the motto of the genre since The Secret History emerged, it is beauty and terror.”
In my debut novel, These Mortal Bodies, it was precisely this tension that I wanted the reader to be discomforted by: the glitz and the glamour of an historic all-girls college with the knowledge that there’s always been a more sinister underside just waiting to be uncovered. Like so many darkly academic protagonists, my main character, Ivy Graveson, is an outsider to the elite society she’s immersed in. While initially enchanted by the world she finds herself in, she inevitably encounters its shadowy reaches as she contends with how far she’s willing to go to belong.
As Mayquist points out “The thing the protagonist strives for is almost always shown to be the thing that is destructive.” And yet they desire it anyway, even when they begin to have misgivings. Perhaps this is what is so compelling about the genre – the forbidden wanting, not only of things we can’t have, but that are most likely rotten anyway. Of knowing that, and being unable to tear ourselves away even as the truth begins to seep out.
On the lighter side of Dark Academia, Erica Waters, author of All That Consumes Us, explains that campus settings provide an escape from everyday atomisation. “For most people, particularly in the US, college is the only time they get to live in a dense, walkable place with built-in community,” she says. The unattainability inherent in Dark Academia then is not purely about riches but also about togetherness and friendship – even the twisted, intense, toxic ones that Dark Academia so often deals with. Long after my time at university, I still long to read about characters getting to live on top of each other, finding myself tempted to exchange seeing close friends every few months for that kind of claustrophobic proximity.
And, as Waters notes, the aesthetic of Dark Academia is very much borne out of the literature and not the other way round. She explains, “As much as Dark Academia contains the romance of ideas, it also contains the romance of objects.” Characters find themselves surrounded by stacks of books and papers, situated in gothic buildings with soaring spires. “Given how much of our lives are lived on screens these days, I think a book that prioritises this kind of physicality and presence is bound to appeal.”
Fiction is also a place where the power structures within academic settings – and the inbuilt violence in many institutions – can be challenged. Although aspects of universities are certainly romanticised within Dark Academia, there is always an inherent acknowledgement of the sinister nature of institutions too – in fact, it’s one of the trademarks of the genre. In the view of Taylor Grothe, author of Hollow, “Dark Academia often acknowledges the inherent disparity between those in power and those scrabbling simply to survive.” They believe the genre’s popularity is down to the fact “we see those often at odds with the (heterocentric, patriarchal) system triumph.”
It’s exactly this writing against the grain of academia that drew Grothe to the genre as a writer as well as a reader. “As a young femme in academia, I found myself roundly dismissed by older white men in particular and the system in general,” they explain. “While writing within Dark Academia, I could confront those awful realities, and even worse inequities.”
As someone who, like Grothe, writes neurodivergent characters, the outsider perspective in Dark Academia gives much room for exploration as a writer. Mayquist notes that Dark Academia has always been a queer genre, particularly amongst queer and trans men in Dark Academia’s early days, arguing that it’s “one of the few genres where LGBTQ+ stories are still centered.” The backdrop of the genre might be elite, privileged worlds and the ruling classes, but they’re usually looked at and examined from a slant, whether the character feels themselves on the outside because of class, gender, race, sexuality, neurotype or some combination thereof.
Olivie Blake, author of The Atlas Six (one of the first Dark Academia titles to really take off on social media), says that “what typically makes the academia dark is that the institution itself, or the institutional structure, is the villain.” The structural injustices at the heart of academia are at the heart of the genre itself, too. Whether a book is in the campus novel tradition or more fantastical, a key element of Dark Academia is that the underside exists not only within the characters but within their surroundings too – and this is very often where the true darkness lies. As Mayquist asks, “Does it center an outsider, does it center beauty, does it hunger for history, does it expose or critique the elite, and does it horrify the reader through doing so?”
In some senses, there’s always a level of fantasy at play in Dark Academia, no matter how real and grounded the setting. Blake argues, “Academia is its own portal fantasy. If you can be accepted among the chosen few by the institution, you can cross the threshold and transcend to something greater, something safer, something more untouchable than you were before. Transcendence from one class to another, or to some upper echelon of the elite, is the very real magic of academia. It is also, often, the lie – hence the darkness.”
Dark Academia plays on this very real hope for transfiguration in our lives and shows us its deceit; because if there’s to be an elite, there’s always got to be a group of people beneath them to solidify that status.
From a craft perspective, the mix of highly specific settings, fish-out-of-water characters, privilege, history, and critique of institutions and structures offers much for writers to work with. For Waters, Dark Academia presents an opportunity “to delve into some of my favorite aspects of writing fiction: localised, highly specific settings; smart, weird, earnest characters; and stories propelled as much by atmosphere and aesthetics as by plot and character development. (The outfits are great too.)”
As a writer, it’s tantalising to write characters who are often in their formative years, still figuring out who they are and tempted in all kinds of often dark directions. As De Elizabeth, author of the forthcoming This Raging Sea, adds, “A fictional campus setting, where there are traditions at play and sometimes corrupt people in charge, creates a natural set of walls for characters to break through and disrupt.”
As political and economic divides gape ever wider, stories of outsiders not only exploring but disrupting – as well as being drawn in by – elite societies seem likely to resonate more than ever. For me, the endless pleasure, fascination and challenge in Dark Academia is the ability to cast the desirable in a different light, turn it this way and that, so that the nightmarish and dreamlike qualities coexist – to expose both the terror and the beauty. Whether it’s fantasy or contemporary or a work – such as mine – that bends itself between genres, there’s much intrigue, joy and catharsis to be found in unpicking the power dynamics that underpin hallowed halls. As Elizabeth says, “Dark Academia is one of those subgenres that can take different shapes, depending upon the storytelling – and I think that’s what makes it special.”
