First-Year Seminar: Campus Novels and Dark Academia: Stories of College Life

"It was a beautiful college," remarks Ralph Ellison's protagonist in the novel Invisible Man, before describing his failure to fit in as a student. This course explores how varied, sometimes contradictory college experiences have been represented across genres and platforms. Our archive includes novels, music, films, poetry, and short stories, including The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, and Taylor Swift's newest album, The Tortured Poets Department. We will study how mystery, consent, nostalgia, desire, beauty, angst, and coming-of-age circulate in these texts. We will glance back at the origins of Dark Academia and older campus stories, from the Greco-Roman tradition to Edgar Allan Poe's gothic tales, and look to the future against the backdrop of higher education in crisis. Most importantly, we will linger in the present to interrogate what it means to be students of the university, the city of St. Louis, and the digital world.
Course Attributes: EN H; FYS; BU BA; AS HUM; FA HUM; AR HUM

First-Year Seminar: Campus Novels and Dark Academia: Stories of College Life

ENGLISH LITERATURE 155

Section 01