What “After the Hunt” Gets Right

Annie Julia Wyman, writer of The Chair, shares insights on Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt. In 2017, she left academia for the entertainment industry, reflecting the challenging job market for humanities Ph.D.s.

From Academia to Entertainment

Wyman co-created The Chair, a Netflix series about academia, capturing the complex personalities of professors. She describes them as sometimes “uptight, self-aggrandizing, depressive, controlling, petty, kind, idealistic, noble, and wise” all at once.

Depiction of Academia’s Challenges

The fictional Pembroke campus in the show faces corporatization and declining humanities enrollment. Professors, particularly older white men, create difficulties for Sandra Oh’s character—the first woman of color leading the English Department—who strives to protect their jobs.

Drama and Relationships

The main character’s romantic involvement with a colleague, described as “a sad, white, not-quite-so-old dude” challenging campus cancel culture, adds a compelling dramatic layer.

“Pembroke, the fictional campus where our show takes place, is corporatizing. Humanities enrollments are dropping; our professors start freaking out, clawing at each other, retrenching.”

“We also discussed a kind of material desperation I knew well and to which we thought viewers who weren’t academics might relate.”

Reception and Reflection

When The Chair launched in 2021, Wyman feared it would seem undignified or too harsh to her academic peers. However, those concerns proved unfounded.

“When The Chair was released in 2021, I worried that it would strike my friends and former mentors in academia as wildly unflattering: undignified, too truthful about how silly our field can be. But those worries turned out to be unwarranted.”

Author's summary: Annie Julia Wyman’s experience bridges academia and entertainment, offering a nuanced, honest portrayal of professors and the challenges in modern humanities education.

The Yale Review — 2025-11-04