LWU Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht

Beschreibung

DARK ACADEMIA is a social media trend devoted to the nostalgic stylization of academic life in the humanities that may never have existed in this form. Its visual hallmark is a subdued colour palette – the hues of leatherbound books, wood-panelled libraries, ivy-covered façades of elite universities and (mostly white) tweed-clad academics. Literary examples of dark academia, such as the texts discussed in this theme issue, often explore the ‚dark sides‘ of bookishness, learning and academic culture: violence, sexism, competition, impostor syndrome and complicity with institutional structures that shore up inequality. Dark academia thus responds to the neoliberal restructuration of higher education since the 1990s and its consequences, such as the student loan crisis in the US, expensive tuition fees in the UK, underfunded departments and increasing pressure to study the humanities for employability.

Nicola Glaubitz & Martin Klepper: Introduction: Dark Academia
Marie-Claire Steinkraus: Between Idealisation and Subversion: Dark Academia in The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Secret History
Lucas Mattila: “We think of it as art meets life, Bunny.“ Cruel Optimism in Mona Awad‘s Bunny
Sydni Zastre: Secret History, No Future: Gender Failure and Reproductive Futurity at Hampden College
Rainer Emig: Dark Academia in Philip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials
Katja Anderson, Natasha Anderson: Death, Deceit and Detective Work in Dark Academia
Anneke Schewe, Melissa Schuh: Exploring the Dark Side of Dark Academia: Postcolonial Criticism and Genre Hybridity in R. F. Kuang‘s Babel
Carolin Wachsmann: BookTok and Dark Academia