eldritchhobbit

Dark Academia novel: Don’t Breathe a Word by Jordyn Taylor (2021) Quote: “Yesterday” starts to play again from the beginning, but it’s a hell of a lot eerier as it becomes the backdrop to the story I typed on the next slide: “In 1962, Hardwick sent a small group of students underground to test a nuclear fallout shelter. Six went down, but only five survived…” ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo (2021) Quote: “This is where it gets interesting. The second son loves this girl so much he decides to step onto an unholy path. Now the story varies, but in the one my mama told me, he makes a deal. He takes his youngest sister, goes to a crossroad on the property past the witching hour, and he waits until some evil comes to him. He looks that evil square in the face and offers it his sister in return for his wife.” … “He kills his sister,” Sam guessed. “Of course he does,” Mr. McCormick said. ALT View the full post.

weirdchristmas: View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: Very Bad People by Kit Frick (2022) Quote: Tuesday morning, three classrooms have been ghosted. All over campus, there are whispers. It’s happening again. And I heard they make initiates drink blood. And it’s just a stupid hoax. The teachers talk too. I bet I know who is responsible. And at least they’re not defacing school property. And there are proper channels here at Tipton. Three students have completed their initiation rite. Which leaves seven of us. ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: Shadow of the Lions by Christopher Swann (2017) Quote: The two lions crouched on top of their pedestals, frozen in preparation to leap. One was snarling, its stone teeth menacing in the late-afternoon shadows, while the other stared out with disdain at the broad sweep of empty soybean fields that lay just across the state highway, a disdain made all the more pointed because the lion was missing its left eye. The missing eye was their only major flaw. A myth of swift and terrible justice falling on those who harmed the lions had shielded them further disfigurement over the years. Blackburne legend had it that the student who chiseled out the left eye as a class prank in 1947 died that same week, drowning in the Shenandoah Creek when his canoe tipped over. Since then… the lions were left alone. ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: My Dearest Darkest by Kayla Cottingham (2022) From the cover: You’ll never guess what’s watching in the dark… Quote: While all towns have their ghosts, Rainwater’s was special. They sank through its submerged sea caves and slithered up its cliffs. They bounced around its caverns and tunnels like electrical pulses in a brain, echoing memories of footsteps and laughter and screams through the ground and into the towering evergreen trees. The peninsula had a habit of keeping things long after they were gone. ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue (2020) Quote: The cabinet was filled with curious and bizarre items. There was a jar with a dead tarantula in it, a case of butterflies and one with insects, a chain made of teeth; there were stamps, an ivory horn, a photo of a two-headed calf, an old jewelry box, some gemstones, a miniature violin and other jars filled with liquid which was too murky to see what was inside. I chose a skull. It was small, like that of a child. Mr. Lavelle nodded as he handed it to me. And for what was not the first time, I felt like he was a seer and that everything that would come to happen he had already foreseen. I held the skull in my hands. I imagined, for a moment, I could squeeze it and it would shatter. I have not thought about this for many years, but now I wonder if I should not have chosen the skull. That perhaps if I had just picked a gemstone, things would have been different. I would not have become what I did. But then I remember the way I felt as they both, he and Victoria, looked at me, and I think perhaps not. It was all inevitable. ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: The Broken Girls by Simone St. James (2018) Quote: Written in pencil, the lines of a familiar rhyme looked back up at her: Mary Hand, Mary Hand, dead and buried under land. She’ll say she wants to be your friend. Do not let her in again! ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: The Cloisters by Katy Hays (2022) Quote: Death always visited me in August. A slow and delicious month we turned into something swift and brutal. The change, quick as a card trick. I should have seen it coming. The way the body would be laid out on the library floor, the way the gardens would be torn apart by the search. The way our jealousy, greed, and ambition were waiting to devour us all, like a snake eating its own tail. The ouroboros. ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: The Honeys by Ryan La Sala (2022) Quote: I don’t fear the dark. I know the dark, and it knows me. Within it, I’m safe from the sun’s lovely illusions. I know what I’ve always known: The monsters worth fearing are the ones that are dangerous enough to hide in daylight. ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: Promise Boys by Nick Brooks (2023) From the cover: Perfection. Excellence. Discipline. Murder. Quote: Sometimes what’s obvious takes a while to see – the person who pulls a trigger doesn’t just disappear into the dark. They are right here among us once we decide we’re ready to question everything we think we know. They’re always closer than you think. ALT View the full post.

I’m delighted to say I’ll be giving two presentations this autumn on Dark Academia topics at academic conferences. Both events have online options, and I hope to see some of you there! I’ll be giving the talk “A Vanished Student Leaves a Haunted Space: An Unsolved Mystery and the Gothic Imagination on the Dark Academia Campus” at Perilous Realms and Haunted Spaces: New England Moot 2023 sponsored by Signum University in October. I’ll be presenting the paper “Consumed by the Campus: Dark Academia, the Gothic Imagination, and the Missing Student" at the Consuming the Gothic Conference sponsored by Sheffield Gothic in November. ALT ALT View the full post.

Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away Is a Book For the Nerds Many thanks to Meg Dowell for this lovely review of our anthology Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away at Now This Is Lit! View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: The Narrow by Kate Alice Marshall (2023) From the cover: They say what the river takes never returns. They are wrong. Quote: The hours crawl by…. For me, it’s nothing. I have waited years…. Then the sun makes its slow way below the horizon. Even in the glow of electric light, I can feel the night’s approach. The dead aren’t meant for daylight. I’m more awake in darkness. Not more alive – it’s a fallacy to suppose I could become less dead. But I am different in the dark. More powerful. ALT View the full post.

ohhellomellow: dramyhsturgis: Halloween 2023: 31 Days of Dark Academia (Part 2) Is Coming Soon! In 2021, my Halloween Countdown focused on 31 Days of Dark Academia. I enjoyed that so much that I’ll be back in October 2023 to spotlight 31 different and new works of Dark Academia! As in 2021, I will be using the #31DaysofDA tag. Each day I’ll be posting a different DA title with a haunting/atmospheric quote. I hope you’ll enjoy the recommendations! ALT In the meantime, here are a few links related to my own Dark Academia-related doings, FYI! In 2022, I had the great delight of teaching a graduate course on Dark Academia for Signum University. This experience led me to write the 2023 article “Teaching Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951),” which appears at Reading Shirley Jackson in the 21st Century. I continue to be fascinated by — and am working on a new project related to — the key features of Dark Academia literature. To my mind, these include the use of Gothic modes of storytelling (as I define Dark Academia as a subset of the Gothic), a focus on an academic setting and educational experience, the cultivation of a dark mood with an emphasis on death, and an interrogation of imbalances in and abuses of power. For a longer discussion about defining the Dark Academia genre (as opposed to the aesthetic), there’s my discussion of DA 1) in my “Looking Back on Genre History segment on Episode 671 of the StarShipSofa podcast and 2) in my essay "Dark Arts and Secret Histories: Investigating Dark Academia” in the forthcoming Potterversity anthology. I have a new project in the works, as well, and will be discussing that soon! Right now, I can say that I’ll be giving a related paper (“Consumed by the Campus: Dark Academia, the Gothic Imagination, and the Missing Student”) in November at Sheffield Gothic’s “Consuming the Gothic” conference. I hope to see some of you there (virtually)! For now, I hope you will enjoy my 2023 Halloween Countdown starting tomorrow! The most wonderful time of the year is almost here! 🎃 Follow my favorite professor for Dark Academia Halloween treats! 💀 📚 🍬 Thank you so much, @ohhellomellow! 🎃 View the full post.

Dark Academia novel: Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella (2020) Quote: It was the place where Eric had eaten his last meal, dreamed his last dream, taken his last breath. The sight of the red brick dormitories, a picture postcard of collegiate perfection to so many, made her heart pound. For her, it wasn’t a college, it was a haunted house. ALT View the full post.

Dark Academia work: “Presentation of an Intact Specimen” by Premee Mohamed, from Wilted Pages: An Anthology of Dark Academia edited by Ai Jiang and Christi Nogle (2023) Quote: No. This one is mine. This museum is mine. I worked too hard for this, and it belongs to me and if he intends to take anything of mine, I will not show the restraint I did when we were students. No one is watching me now. Only God, so they say; and He will, I think, forgive me this. Surely it is not a sin to remove a sinner from the face of the Earth to prevent future sins. Think of everything Bainbridge has done. Think of the oceans of blood on his hands. And the tiny, tiny bit that would be on hers. ___ It was madness, it was all madness; but she examined the madness from every angle and it seemed good and sound, like an old tool of forged iron. She saw no weaknesses in it. It was merely the removal of something worthless from the museum — it was curation. She and Godfrey could find a more suitable assistant. It would only benefit the institution. ALT View the full post.

So it begins! Each day of this dark and beautiful month I’ll be posting a different Dark Academia title with a haunting, atmospheric quote. I hope you’ll enjoy the recommendations! Dark Academia story: “X House” by J.T. Ellison, from In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia Anthology edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (2023) Quote: There was a bog near the bridge, on the other side of the forest. The things that disappeared into that place… Animals. Trees. People. Yes, it was beautiful, but it was dangerous. So many were lost over the years, women who vanished into the woods and never returned. Why someone would build a school in this desolate area was a forever unknown. ALT View the full post.

Interview: New collection of Star Wars essays informs and inspires Many thanks to Eric Clayton and Dork Side of the Force for sharing this kind review of — and interview with my co-editor Emily Strand and me about — our new anthology of essays on Star Wars! View the full post.

In 2021, my Halloween Countdown focused on 31 Days of Dark Academia. I enjoyed that so much that I’ll be back in October 2023 to spotlight 31 different and new works of Dark Academia! As in 2021, I will be using the #31DaysofDA tag. Each day I’ll be posting a different DA title with a haunting/atmospheric quote. I hope you’ll enjoy the recommendations! ALT In the meantime, here are a few links related to my own Dark Academia-related doings, FYI! In 2022, I had the great delight of teaching a graduate course on Dark Academia for Signum University. This experience led me to write the 2023 article “Teaching Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951),” which appears at Reading Shirley Jackson in the 21st Century. I continue to be fascinated by — and am working on a new project related to — the key features of Dark Academia literature. To my mind, these include the use of Gothic modes of storytelling (as I define Dark Academia as a subset of the Gothic), a focus on an academic setting and educational experience, the cultivation of a dark mood with an emphasis on death, and an interrogation of imbalances in and abuses of power. For a longer discussion about defining the Dark Academia genre (as opposed to the aesthetic), there’s my discussion of DA 1) in my “Looking Back on Genre History segment on Episode 671 of the StarShipSofa podcast and 2) in my essay "Dark Arts and Secret Histories: Investigating Dark Academia” in the forthcoming Potterversity anthology. I have a new project in the works, as well, and will be discussing that soon! Right now, I can say that I’ll be giving a related paper (“Consumed by the Campus: Dark Academia, the Gothic Imagination, and the Missing Student”) in November at Sheffield Gothic’s “Consuming the Gothic” conference. I hope to see some of you there (virtually)! For now, I hope you will enjoy my 2023 Halloween Countdown starting tomorrow! The most wonderful time of the year is almost here! 🎃 View the full post.

ALT ALT Happy anniversary, Enterprise! On this day in 2001, Enterprise debuted. Happy 22nd anniversary to a chapter of Star Trek that has a lot to say and deserves greater attention. This year I was thrilled to put my essay on Enterprise out into the universe! Cue “Faith of the Heart”… 🎶 🖖 View the full post.

ALT It’s almost October, which means it’s almost time to start my annual re-reading of one of my all-time favorite books, A NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER by Roger Zelazny. With 31 chapters, one for each day of the month, it is a fantastic mash-up of creepy seasonal goodness wrapped into a compelling story, a kind of literary advent calendar for Halloween. View the full post.

leannareneehieber: Darlings! I’m SO excited! More Ghosts! This time, with GOTHIC feeling!!!! This goth is happy-dancing through haunted houses. Publisher’s Marketplace Deal Report: America’s Most Gothic by Leanna Renee Hieber, Andrea Janes Imprint: @kensingtonbooks Bram Stoker award finalists and authors of A HAUNTED HISTORY OF INVISIBLE WOMEN: TRUE STORIES OF AMERICA’S GHOSTS Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes’s AMERICA’S MOST GOTHIC: HAUNTED HISTORY STRANGER THAN FICTION, an examination of America’s most Gothic places and hauntings, featuring the weird and wild trappings of Gothic tradition such as hidden passages, wailing women, family curses, and more, with an emphasis on female spirits and the cultural narratives surrounding their stories, to Elizabeth May at @kensingtonbooks , in an exclusive submission, for publication in 2025, by Chelsea Hensley at KT Literary (world). Non-fiction: History August 14, 2023 View the full post.

I’m delighted to share that I will be presenting my paper “Consumed by the Campus: Dark Academia, the Gothic Imagination, and the Missing Student” at Sheffield Gothic’s “Consuming the Gothic” conference in November! ALT View the full post.

ALT We had a great time celebrating our new Star Trek and Star Wars books at events this past weekend — so much so that Mr. Spock seemed to join me, old-school Victorian spirit photography style! 🖖 View the full post.