Kuang sets Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution at an alternate version of the University of Oxford, the pinnacle of Western education in Europe. Her focus on representation and the complicity of Western higher education in imperialism are interventions in the genre.

In 2022, dark academia is a popular social media aesthetic that celebrates preppy style, the genteel use of potentially addictive substances, and moody poetry. School and college/varsity novels are old genres in Western literature, however. In more contemporary works like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, college is a place where outsiders struggle to fit in with elites, and liberal arts education is no proof against the worst human impulses. Later works like the Harry Potter novels and Lev Grossman’s The Magicians add magic to the mix. Academia is “dark” because it shows high school and college as pressure cookers. Bullying, the pressure to succeed, and the temptation to use magic to oppress others waylay most students aside from the hero and their sidekicks. Works like Rowling’s and Grossman’s are speculative, but writers in the genre rarely use these what-if worlds to represent people of color grappling with the nature of power and the purpose of education.