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Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 24: House of Night series by P.C. & Kristin Cast (2007-2014)
Quote from Marked (2007): “Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.” NOTE: I contributed the essay “Reimagining ‘Magic City’: How the Casts Mythologize Tulsa” to a book about the House of Night Series, Nyx in the House of Night. You can read more of my posts about the series here.   
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eldritchhobbit

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Halloween 2022: Day 2

Song: “Knoxville Boy” Quote: When the moon is high the Knoxville boy
Goes prowling out to kill.
We don’t know why so many die
To give that boy a thrill.
A handsome lad with a wealthy dad
And eyes of bluebird blue,
He’s killed before, he’ll kill some more,
And the next one could be you.

When the fog rolls into Knoxville
And the river’s on the rise,
Don’t go near the Knoxville boy
There’s murder in his eyes. Listen to Larry Stephenson’s performance…
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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 24

Dark Academia novel: The Ravens by Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige (2020) From the cover: These sorority girls are real witches. Quote: That was when she noticed the single tarot card positioned nearly at the head of her bare mattress, as if placed there by a careful hand. It was the Death card her mother had given her. The skeleton leered up at her with a gruesome smile, and for a moment, it almost looked like the eyes glowed red. Vivi shivered, despite knowing that it was a trick of the light. I told you. Westerly isn’t a safe place, not for people like you… ALT
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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 28

Dark Academia novel: All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth (2018) Quote: There was a story on campus about a student who had died many years ago—so long ago that no one remembered anymore what his name was or how he had died exactly, but there were reports every now and again of a sighting of his ghost. Some said he’d hanged himself in the showers of the senior boys’ dormitory over a broken heart; others said he’d overdosed on pills and fallen into an eternal slumber in his dorm bed over a failing exam grade. It was bad luck if you saw him, a harbinger of terrible things to come. Bryce Langston had reported seeing the ghost on his way home from the library one night. The next morning, he got a rejection letter from Harvard. Everyone had thought he would be a shoo-in, and he hadn’t even gotten on the waiting list. The next year, Amanda King supposedly saw the ghost right before she got in a fatal car accident. I always thought about the ghost when I was walking around campus at night by myself. I imagined seeing a white smear in the corner of my vision, but every time I turned my head, there was nothing there.
ALT
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Teaching Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman

Teaching Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951) by Amy H. Sturgis I’m happy to say that my “Teaching Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951)” post, based on my experience of teaching Shirley Jackson in my graduate Dark Academia course in Fall 2022, is now online at Reading Shirley Jackson in the 21st Century.
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Meet The Last Man!

Meet The Last Man! In March 2024, I will be offering the module “Meet The Last Man” with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University. Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man is one of the most relevant books we can read right now, and I’m really looking forward to exploring it with students! Here is more information.
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 17: In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead (2021)
Quote: It turns out the real you is a quilt, made up of the light and the dark. The life you’ve lived in sunshine and your shadow life, stretching underneath the surface of your mind like a deep underwater world, exerting invisible power. You are a living, breathing story made up of the moments in time you cherish, all strung together, and those you hide. The moments that seem lost. Until the day they’re not.
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30 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 18: If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio (2017)
Quote 1: But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart — by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.  Quote 2: You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.

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Halloween 2022: Halloween Day

Happy Halloween, everyone! Song: “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe Quote: The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me— Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. Read the complete poem. Listen to Joan Baez’s performance…
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<p>I am delighted to report that STAR TREK: ESS...

I am delighted to report that STAR TREK: ESSAYS EXPLORING THE FINAL FRONTIER is coming soon! ? I’m so excited to share this with the universe! This academic anthology includes work from Emily Strand, Una McCormack, Daniel Unruh, Edward Guimont, Brunella Tedesco-Barlocco, Kristina Šekrst, Javier Francisco, Erin Bell, Martine Gjermundsen Ræstad, Andrew Higgins, John Jackson Miller, and me. The cover art is by Emily Austin. More information, including the complete Table of Contents, is available here from Vernon Press. ALT
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eldritchhobbit

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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 30: The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (2021)
Quote 1: And when you’re truly scared, there’s nowhere to hide - no private school, no popularity, no trust fund. It’s just you and your most base emotion. Fear is where the truth lies.
Quote 2: But there was something wrong with me. It clawed at my insides, desperate to get out.
Quote 3: If you want this to be over, just make sure she screams.
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Halloween 2022: Day 21

Song: “Young Charlotte” Quote: They reached the door, and Charles sprang out and held his hand to her.
“Why sit you like a monument, have you no power to stir?”
He called her once, he called her twice; she answered not a word.
He asked her for her hand again, and yet she never stirred. There are many variations of this song. Read more here. Listen to the performance of Grandpa Jones…
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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 27

Dark Academia novel: The Other Lives of Miss Emily White by A. J. Elwood (2023) Quote: It’s a ghost… a ghost of her. I saw her again, standing in the entrance hall, dripping to the parquet; her hair a damp rope, her face pale, her eyes cast into darkness. I pushed my blanket away as if it were a shroud, smothering and heavy, weighting me into a grave. I felt cold right through. Emily was young and vibrant and alive. She was here. She’d touched my arm. She’d smiled at me and I had lived in that smile, just for a time. She couldn’t simply stop, couldn’t vanish… I peered into the corners of the room, where the shadows lay deepest. I half expected a figure to be standing there, darkness spooling from its heart, like paint spiralling from a brush in a jar of water. I fervently wished it away.      ALT
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Halloween 2020, Day 2

Here’s a Halloween-relevant article by Kim Taylor Blakemore at CrimeReads: “The New Gothic: Feminist and Unapologetic - Tracing the Evolution of Gothic Heroines from the Mid-20th Century to the Present Day Through 7 Novels.” 
On a related note, this is a timely reading list from Emily Wenstrom at Book Riot: “5 Modern Authors Upholding the Gothic Feminist Tradition in 2020.” One of the works recommended is one of the stellar “must read” novels of the season, Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia. Here, have a taste: - from Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) Chilling, no? A longer excerpt is available here: “Read an Excerpt from Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Haunted House Mystery.”
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Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia, October 17

Dark Academia novel: The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven (2022) Quote: It was open on the very last page I’d looked at: ‘How the Ritual Was Performed’. I wondered which of my fellow philosophy students had stumbled upon it. And why did they leave in such a hurry that they left the volume lying around like a piece of old junk? The page was exactly as I last saw it, with one tiny, significant exception: the droplet of blood in the bottom right corner. A small smudge, as though someone had pricked their finger on a spindle and then tried to turn the page. The sight made me smile. Someone had tried to perform the ritual. I knew it in my bones. There was someone at Carvell as intrigued by the occult as I was. For some reason, this knowledge bolstered me. In a moment, the decision was made. I was going to attempt the ritual too.   ALT
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 10: This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers (2012)
Quote 1: We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the soundtrack of our own impending death. Quote 2: Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they’re swallowed into other, bigger noises. This is what it sounds like when the world ends.
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