You Belong Here

Dark academia is a contemporary genre. While the term describes a general aesthetic involving gothic university architecture, autumnal or wintery atmospheres, and academic clothing styles, it also refers to a literary subgenre. As the name indicates, dark academia highlights the “darkness” behind prestigious schools, often incorporating elements of mystery or suspense while engaging in discussions of class.

In You Belong Here, Wyatt College is an esteemed institution, and its opulent allure causes conflict with the less well-off townspeople. Beckett’s and Delilah’s college experiences don’t center on a top-tier education but scandal. Beckett’s involvement with a crime on campus contaminates her college career and her life beyond college. Pointedly, until individuals after the fact manage to expose the crime, Beckett escapes justice due to her parents’ positions at the college, highlighting her class privilege and the way it allows her opportunities others lack. While some criticize dark academia for romanticizing elitist education, Miranda’s novel subverts the stock assumption that such schools are paragons of enlightenment. Miranda presents the prestigious school as a toxic site, where the students, parents, and professors hurt, deceive, and kill.

An early, retroactive example of dark academia is Brideshead Revisited (1945) by the English novelist Evelyn Waugh. A sizable amount of the story occurs at Oxford University, where Charles Ryder becomes friendly with Sebastian Flyte. Charles’s and Sebastian’s connection replicates that of Beckett’s college friendship with Adalyn. Like Adalyn, Sebastian creates drama; similar to Beckett, Charles is more circumspect and thus intrigued by Sebastian’s daringness. Both examples explore what consequences exist or don’t exist for those with access to traditionally upper-class institutions, as well as how young psyches are impacted by their privilege. The genre often utilizes a more reflective or, in many cases, lower-class protagonist through which to observe the antics of higher-class students, a trope that Miranda subverts by centering a more privileged character.

A recent example of dark academia is Mona Awad’s Bunny (2019). Unlike You Belong Here, Bunny has an overtly comedic mood. Additionally, education is at the forefront: The characters are a group of young women earning their MFA in creative writing, yet the education is “dark.” The young women form a cultish group, the titular Bunnies, and they attend a workshop in a classroom known as “the Cave.” Much like a fundamental plot point in You Belong Here, the writing program acts as a disquieting test that mimics a form of bullying or hazing. As the Bunnies supernaturally create malfunctioning boys that they discard on the town, the university—like Wyatt College—has a tense relationship with the locals. The implication is that dark academia causes darkness for people in the surrounding community too.

Another contemporary dark academia novel is Lauren Ling Brown’s Society of Lies (2024), which mirrors You Belong Here’s structure, as it goes back and forth in time to reveal the respective experiences of Maya and her younger sister, Naomi, at Princeton University. As with Beckett and her daughter, Delilah, Maya’s unresolved mystery harms Naomi. Together, the two novels upend the meaning of “legacy student.” The younger family members—Delilah and Naomi—don’t inherit a positive educational experience from their mother and older sister; rather, the “legacy” is trauma developed within the complex social dynamics of Ivy League universities.