You know them, I love them. Campus storylines. Students with backpacks stroll down leafy quads. Professors linger in empty classrooms, trying to solve complex equations on chalkboards. I particularly love the scary academic fictions, the sinister force that may be supernatural and the very real bigotry facing a young Black student at a small college in the 2022 film "Master"; the creepy mentorship of Classics scholars gone too far in Donna Tartt's novel "The Secret History" (which really should be a streaming series).
I spent the first part of my career in academia, as a graduate student then instructor, and it's nice to return to campus in fiction, without all the pesky department meetings and creepy supervisors. Perhaps it's firsthand knowledge of the field that draws me to dark academia. Yes, small elite colleges really are that cloistered. Yes, small pond poets sometimes do abuse their power. But one area of darkness that campus stories have overwhelmingly neglected to explore is the very real crisis of adjuncts. Lucky for us, "Lucky Hank" has arrived.
