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Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

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Dice in Mind Interview

It was a delight to join Emily Strand, with whom I co-edited the anthologies Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier and Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away (both 2023 from Vernon Press), to talk Star Trek and Star Wars with the Dice in Mind podcast. Dice in Mind is a podcast hosted by Brad Browne and Jason Kaufman that explores the intersection of life, games, science, music, philosophy, and creativity through interviews with leading creatives. Episode 106: Drs. Amy Sturgis and Emily Strand | Dice in Mind
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Dark Academia Works Inspired by True Crime Cases?

Hello, all! I am looking for recommendations of Dark Academia works (novels, short stories, films, television series) based on true crime. I would be grateful for any suggestions for my list. Thank you! I am intentionally casting my net widely, defining the Dark Academic genre (as opposed to the aesthetic) as one that focuses on an academic setting and educational experience, employs Gothic modes of storytelling, cultivates a dark mood by contemplating the subject of death, and offers critique for interrogating imbalances and abuses of power.* ALT Below the cut is my current list of Dark Academia Works Inspired by True Crime Cases. All suggestions are welcome! Dark Academia Works Inspired/Informed by True Crime Cases Note 1: “True crime” is defined here as a specific case (for example, a murder or missing person’s case), not as a larger historical event (for example, the Salem Witch Trials or the Opium Wars) or an amalgam of cases (for example, general hazing in fraternities).
Note 2: This list is in chronological order based on the true crime case.
Note 3: Some works that aren’t fully DA but incorporate DA sections are included. TRUE CRIME: 1897 disappearance of student Bertha Mellish from Mount Holyoke College
DA novels: The Button Field by Gail Husch (2014)
Killingly by Katharine Beutner (2023) TRUE CRIME: 1924 killing of Bobby Franks by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb
DA Novels: Compulsion by Meyer Levin (1956)
Nothing but the Night by James Yaffe (1957)
Little Brother Fate by Mary-Carter Roberts (1957)
These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever (2020)
Hollow Fires by Samira Ahmed (2022)
Jazzed by Jill Dearman (2022)
DA films: Rope (1948), Compulsion (1959), and Murder by Numbers (2002) TRUE CRIME: 1932 kidnapping and killing of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.; 1933 kidnapping and killing of Brooke Hart; and 1932-1934 crime spree of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow
DA novels: Truly Devious books by Maureen Johnson (especially the first trilogy, 2018-2020) TRUE CRIME: 1944 killing of David Kammerer by Columbia University student Lucien Carr
DA film:
Kill Your Darlings (2013) TRUE CRIME: 1946 disappearance of student Paula Jean Welden from Bennington College
DA novels:
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson (1951)
Last Seen Wearing by Hillary Waugh (1952)
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell (2014)
Quantum Girl Theory by Erin Kate Ryan (2022) TRUE CRIME: 1973 killing of student Cynthia Hellman at Randolph-Macon Women’s College
DA novel:
Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison (2019) TRUE CRIME: 1978 killing of students Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy and attack of students Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler by Ted Bundy at Florida State University
DA novel:
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll (2023) TRUE CRIME: 1985 killing of Derek and Nancy Haysom by University of Virginia students Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Söring
DA novel:
With a Kiss We Die by L.R. Dorn (2023) TRUE CRIME: 1999 killing of student Hae Min Lee from Woodlawn High School (by Adnan Syed? debated)
DA novel:
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (2023) TRUE CRIME: 2022 killing of students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin from the University of Idaho (by Washington State University student Bryan Kohberger? currently awaiting trial)
DA novel:
This Book Will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead (2025) *(I go into this definition in further detail in my segment here on the StarShipSofa podcast, my graduate course on Dark Academia, and my 2023 academic essay “Dark Arts and Secret Histories: Investigating Dark Academia.”)
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Consumed by the Campus

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
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Bertha Mellish and the Missing Student

On November 18, 1897, junior student Bertha Lane Mellish vanished from Mount Holyoke College. Her disappearance remains an unsolved mystery. I’m currently working on a book project that involves the Mellish case. Today it feels especially important to say her name. Note: If anyone would like a (very brief!) peek into my current book project, here is a video of my presentation “Missing Students and Their Fictional Afterlives: True Crime, Crime Fiction, and Dark Academia.“ I gave this talk earlier this year at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining Crime in Popular Culture” conference. ALT ALT
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A Night in the Lonesome October

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.
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 1: Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson (1951) Quote: Poor things, she thought - do they have to spend all this energy just to surround me? It seemed pitiful that these automatons should be created and wasted, never knowing more than a minor fragment of the pattern in which they were involved, to learn and follow through insensitively a tiny step in the great dance which was seen close up as the destruction of Natalie, and far off, as the end of the world. They had all earned their deaths, Natalie thought…
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 2: Conversion by Katherine Howe (2014) Quote: Something was eating away at the back of my brain. Girls. Dominant narratives. Sex. Death. Arthur Miller. Ann Putman sitting invisible right in the middle of history.  
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021 October 4: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1967) Quote: The girl so far had remembered nothing of her experiences on the Rock; nor, in Doctor McKenzie’s opinion or that of the two eminent special­ists from Sydney and Melbourne, would she ever remember. A portion of the delicate mechanism of the brain appeared to be irrevocably damaged.  “Like a clock, you know,” the doctor explained. “A clock that stops under a certain set of unusual conditions and refuses ever to go again beyond a particular point.”
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 5: Grey Land Duology by Peadar Ó Guilín (2016-2018) Quote from The Call (2016):  “Oh, they mean to do more than kill you, child. They want to twist you. To crumple you up like an old sheet of paper.”
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 6: The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
Quote: Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does.
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

OCT. 7: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (2019) Quote 1: I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me. Quote 2: All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down.
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31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 8: Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber (1943)  Quote:  Things are different from what I thought. They’re much worse. Film Adaptations: Weird Woman (1944), Night of the Eagle (A.K.A. Burn, Witch, Burn!) (1962), and Witches’ Brew (A.K.A. Which Witch is Which?) (1980)
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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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