Confused noises

NGC 6744, Great Spiral

Halloween Countdown 2024, Day 1

Halloween season is here!

Since 2005, I’ve been observing a Halloween countdown on whatever social media I was using at the time with a daily post throughout October. These days I am primarily on Mastodon (so if you're in the Fediverse, or connected to it via Threads or some other means, please say hi!), but I also post on Tumblr, my Goodreads blog, and Dreamwidth, among other places. 

I look forward to sharing October with you! Happy Countdown to Halloween 2024!

This year I will focus on Halloween-friendly texts (long and short) available for free online. I will try to lean away from the usual suspects and, I hope, bring you some treats that you will enjoy!

This countdown will have several separate parts. The first part is inspired by Bridget M. Marshall’s excellent 2021 work Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature. In her book, Marshall notes that dark and dreadful Gothic novels were very popular with the “mill girls” who worked in 19th-century factories. I’d like to start the countdown by recommending some of the shiver-inducing texts these women reported reading and savoring.

Here begins the Day 1 post!

One of the most popular titles with women working in factories in Manchester and Lancashire, UK, was Mysteries of London (1844-1845) by G.W.M. Reynolds.

Read it here.

Quote: “Perhaps there is no other cry in the world, save that of ‘fire!’ more calculated to spread terror and dismay, when falling suddenly and unexpectedly upon the ears of a party of revellers, than that of ‘A corpse! a corpse!’”

Fifa kitty

some of my favorite replies to this tweet. happy lesbian visibility week!

i am going to wake up from this nap on time and feeling refreshed and not any worse than I do at this current time

sun

tea, coffee

did I ever tell yall I used to think charlie chaplin was a drag king. for like three years straight

we watched modern times in seventh grade n I saw this shot n just took it face value that he was a twinky butch. for three years

I only found out he wasn’t because in tenth grade the topic of old hollywood leading ladies came up w my friends n I went “I think it’s so cool how charlie chaplin did all those drag roles. she was cute too haha” n they all looked at me like I’d said something just truly fucking insane. which for the record I had

seriously, please support your local library!

Songs used:

YouTube link // SoundCloud link

you don’t need anything else today, this is all the sustenance you need

Your YA novel title is:

A (object closest to you on the left) of (last thing you spent money on) and (your current emotion)

Add your results in the tags!

this brush is called claude m(onet) and i think it sort of does the job

윤희에게 (2019)

sharing with you my submission for the @filmposterzine​! i did mine on a korean lgbt film titled 윤희에게 (Moonlit Winter) which i highly recommend to those who are looking for a wlw film featuring women of color

Pero buatefack

— Jean-Paul Sartre; in “Talking with Sartre” (p. 130) [edited] (via insearchofwisdom)

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!

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! 💀 📚 🍬