Episodios
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It’s finally happening! We’re going back to the beginning and re-examining ‘The Secret History’ with 8 seasons of the podcast behind us and this season of reading Tartt’s influences - how has our list of tropes held up? Do we still love the novel whole-heartedly?
'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!'
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.We’re so excited to revisit this novel and re-examine it with our updated knowledge and experience of dark academia.
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Donna Tartt herself cited Patricia Highsmith’s ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ as a book that was important to her when writing ‘The Secret HIstory’, and as that idea is the basis for this season, we had to give this one a whirl! There’s also been a recent Netflix mini-series adaptation so it’s a story that’s had a recent resurgence - it felt like time.
Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the law, when an unexpected acquaintance offers him a free trip to Europe and a chance to start over.
Ripley wants money, success and the good life and he's willing to kill for it. When his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking.Both of us went into this novel blind with very little knowledge of the story or the characters, just the sense of the legacy of Highsmith as an acclaimed author. How clearly will we be able to see the influences in ‘The Secret History’?
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'Frankenstein' is a literary staple. Everyone has heard of it, and most discerning reader will have either read it or have it on their TBR. Groundbreaking, pivotal and genre making... But how much of an influence does it have on modern dark academia?
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‘Stoner’ is a classic campus novel that has been on my (Sophie’s TBR) for years and years - it’s one of those novels that is almost universally loved.
It’s going to be very interesting to see the comparisons between seminal campus novels from opposite sides of the Atlantic. We’ve featured Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’, and now it’s the turn of ‘Stoner’.
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Ancient literature? Yeah, we’re going there!
‘Bacchae’ is the play, the source material, the inspiration, for the adventures and dangers that Henry and Co get in to during ‘The Secret History’. It’s a foundational text for this novel and lays the groundwork for the conflict and the goal of the book, and shapes and sets the tone for the academic tones and goals in dark academia.
Bacchae, a profound exploration of the human psyche, deals with the appalling consequences of resistance to Dionysus, god of wine and unfettered emotion. This tragedy, which above all others speaks to our post-Freudian era, is one of Euripides' two last surviving plays.
This is the first time we’ve ever encountered ancient literature on the podcast, and our first deep dive into the underlying inspirations for ‘The Secret History’ - we’re so excited about getting deep on this season of the podcast and connecting with the novel and Tartt’s inspiration. This play changed her life!
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Welcome to season 8 of The Dark Academicals!
We’re kicking off with ‘Black Chalk’ by Christopher J Yates, a psychological thriller campus novel from 2013, that features on nearly every dark academia reading list out there. It’s much more similar to the earlier dark academia than our explorations of modern dark academia so we were eager to really give it a go.
One game. Six students. Five survivors. It was only ever meant to be a game played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University; a game of consequences, silly forfeits, and childish dares. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal and more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results. Now, 14 years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round. Who knows better than your best friends what would break you? A gripping psychological thriller partly inspired by the author's own time at Oxford University, this is perfect for fans of The Secret History and The Bellwether Revivals. The author's background in puzzle writing and setting can clearly be seen in the plotting of this clever, tricky book that will keep readers guessing to the very end.
With an Oxford setting, a dangerous game, and fracturing friendship, this has the makings of everything we look for for the podcast. Will it make the cut?
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In this extra special episode of The Dark Academicals, we have Katy Hays, author of 'The Cloisters' discussing fate, destiny, dark academia and more.
The conversation flows from Dark Academia tropes, to the pivotal action in 'The Cloisters', as well as finding both Sophie and I shooketh at Katy's writing process. and excitement regarding future projects.
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Can you believe it’s already the season seven finale of ‘The Dark Academicals’? We can’t!
For this final episode we’ve got a dark academia thriller set between the 1990s and current day that we think is going to be a surefire hit, and possibly pose some real connections to ‘The Secret History’.
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It’s Sarah’s first time reading S.T. Gibson, while Sophie has already read ‘A Dowry of Blood’ and so there are already some expectations and intrigue going into ‘An Education in Malice’.
We had a lot of fun talking about this book, and we hope you enjoy listening along!
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It’s time for our dark academia adjacent title for season seven and we’re tackling Curtis Sittenfeld’s classic campus novel, ‘Prep’.
Sophie read this about a decade ago and has had a lingering love for it ever since, so it has some big shoes to fill on this reread and for Sarah’s first read.
'Prep’ is a modern classic generally in fiction, but also in the realm of campus novels. We can’t wait to see how this informs what we know as dark academia.
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Welcome to The Dark Academicals, the podcast where we delve into the mythos of dark academia one book at a time.
Especially when that one book has a cover like this one... Whoever said you can't judge a book by its cover was wrong. But then again, as we dig down into 'Belladonna' we start to discover that maybe it's not everything we were promised it would be?
There were definitely some polarising opinions on the reading experience. Was it dark academia though? We did find some common ground there at least! -
Welcome to The Dark Academicals, the podcast where we delve into the mythos of dark academia one book at a time.
Have you ever come across lunar magic before? We haven’t!
With this beautiful cover and the promise of dark academia meeting lunar magic, ‘Curious Tides’ had to have a starring role in season seven. This was one of our most anticipated reads of the end of 2023 so we’re incredibly excited to get to discover it for the podcast.
Can this possibly deliver everything it’s promising and hit the right dark academia notes? -
Welcome to the SEVENTH season of The Dark Academicals!
We kick off with a big one. The TikTok favourite 'A Deadly Education'. It has received a lot of hype, and is a copmmon feature on Dark Academia lists... But can it live up to that reputation? And is it, actually, Dark Academia?
In this episode we discuss:
- Representation of POC characters
- Diversity
- Scene setting and sense of place
Plus much, much more. Listen now! :) -
There is one TV show that we have discussed, referenced and alluded to throughout the history of The Dark Academicals.
It’s ‘Gilmore Girls’. Obviously.
It’s synonymous with the dark academia seasons, she’s everyone’s favourite bookworm, and everybody has opinions about this show. We couldn’t get any further in The Dark Academicals without dedicating a full, available-to-all episode to one of our favourite shows.
In this episode we discuss:
- The merits of Paris Geller
- The complicated class and social wars of Stars Hollow, Chilton and Yale
- The gross betrayal of Lane Kim
- Dean vs Jess vs Logan - do dark academia love interests and relationships exist? -
We’ve reached the finale of season 6! Already!
There seems to be a curse within ‘The Dark Academicals’ for the finale books, but we’re confident that we’ve broken the cycle with Ava Reid’s ‘A Study in Drowning’.
Can it possibly live up to our sky-high dark academia expectations and turn around our tradition of ending the season on a disappointing book? Let’s find out!
In this episode we discuss:
- Misogyny in academia
- The cult of publishing
- Mythology and folklore -
‘Summer Sons’ by Lee Mandelo is taking us to Vanderbilt and we are so excited about this one!
This sounds like everything that we love in a novel and we’re really looking forward to seeing how it measures up against our examinations.
A queer Southern Gothic with ‘academic intrigue’?Bring. It. On.
In this episode we discuss:
- When the Southern Gothic meets just…the Southern
- The atmosphere and the cloying humidity of the novel
- Vanderbilt and the academic possibilities
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Happy Halloween!
To add a little haunting into your day, we’ve got a brand new episode for you! ‘She is a Haunting’ by Trang Thanh Tran has been on our list for a long time and it couldn’t be a more perfect season to feature it on the podcast.
We’ve got a haunted house, a Gothic mystery, a ghost and questions about belonging - but does it tick any of our dark academia boxes?
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Our dark academia adjacent book for Season 6 is a classic horror novel from the Queen of the Southern Gothic, Ms Shirley Jackson, and one of Sophie’s favourite authors.
It’s officially spooky season so we’re looking at ‘The Haunting of Hill House’.
How does the Gothic and horror play into dark academia?
In this episode we discuss:
- The way that Shirley Jackson pokes fun at horror, while also writing a genuinely terrifying horror novel
- The academic approach to studying the occult and supernatural
- Eleanor and unreliable narrators
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This week’s episode features a book like nothing we’ve featured before: a spicy TikTok dark romance that the BookTok girlies are shouting from the rooftops and calling dark academia at every chance they get.
"If this is madness," she whispered almost against his lips, "drown me in it."
Corvina Clemm is a woman with secrets. The last thing she expects to receive is an admission letter from the University of Verenmore, a place just as secretive.
A castle atop a mountain, Verenmore is steeped in shadows, deceit and death, a place where students have been disappearing every five years for over a century. As Corvina becomes caught up in unravelling the clues to solve the mystery, her path collides with Vad Deverell, her enigmatic professor.
Vad, too, is a man with secrets. And he cannot allow Corvina to get close enough to discover what he hides. But whenever she is near, his heart and soul yearn to possess her.
As Corvina and Vad become more and more entangled, their passion for each other could be the very thing to solve the mystery of Verenmore - or it could bring them both down in flames.With a secretive university located on a mountain, an enigmatic professor and a forbidden romance, it’s ticking some boxes already, but will it live up to our examination?
In this episode we discuss:
- Uncomfortable and creepy relationships with power imbalances
- The lack of academics
- A lack of answers and unfinished business
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We’re back for season six (!) of ‘The Dark Academicals’ and we’ve got a line-up full of spooks and scares for the best reading season of the year.
Our first pick takes us to a New York magic school and an obsession with a childhood fantasy book series in ‘The Magicians’ by Lev Grossman.
Does this portal fantasy have what it takes to also take the title of dark academia?
In this episode we discuss:
- The lacklustre magic system and world-building
- The numerous influences from ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ and ‘Harry Potter’
- Misogyny, ableism and fatphobia in the novel
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