Dark academia

Abstract

This text addresses the cultural phenomenon of dark academia, an aesthetic and convention that originated on Tumblr around 2015 and was widely popularized during the Covid-19 pandemic. Emerging as an internet subculture, dark academia reinterprets the image of higher education from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, especially in the Anglo-American context. Its characteristic imagery — ivyclad campuses, Gothic and Victorian architecture, secret societies, libraries, autumnal landscapes, and atmospheric weather — creates an aura of mystery, melancholy, and intellectual elitism. The phenomenon operates across both visual culture and literature. On one level, it manifests through fashion, lifestyle, and nostalgia for classical education; on another, it reworks the tradition of the campus novel by merging it with Gothic and horror conventions. Canonical texts such as Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Nancy H. Kleinbaum’s Dead Poets Society established its narrative and aesthetic codes. More recent works, including R.F. Kuang’s Babel and M.L. Rio’s If We Were Villains, extend the genre by introducing feminist, postcolonial, and intersectional perspectives that challenge its earlier limitations. Although the aesthetic has been criticized for Eurocentrism, elitism, and lack of diversity, contemporary reinterpretations increasingly address race, class, gender, and accessibility. As a result, dark academia has evolved beyond an idealized portrayal of privileged elites into a more plural and self-reflexive cultural formation. This text situates the phenomenon at the intersection of internet subcultures, literary traditions, and romantic legacies, highlighting its enduring relevance in twenty-first-century popular and academic discourse.