I had never thought of the comparison between Tumblr/Pinterest aesthetics to Vanitas paintings before, but it makes perfect sense. It's symbolism through photography. Feel like vast swathes of the internet just clicked into place for me, so thanks! I wonder how much Harry Potter is responsible for Dark Academia too, those movies were dripping in that aesthetic.
Haha... some good points, for sure. Yes, "dark academia" is a fantasy - an Old World aesthetic for us romantics who do not share the taste for ultra-modernism in any form.
We love beauty, atmosphere, and have an appreciation for the classics. And, I guess, a certain nostalgia for the past - at least visually!
That said, Donna Tartt is an amazing novelist, first and foremost. I don't think this trend was something she had in mind when she wrote the novel; it developed as a result of the book's popularity.
I very much agree. From everything I've ever seen from or about Donna Tartt, she would be horrified to think that she'd inspired anything as silly as the fantasy we're talking about. "You're dumb," is my summation of what she would say to someone making tik-toks of themselves using a typewriter under a candle chandelier.
I agree… but I’d take it one step further. The secret history can definitely be interpreted as a warning and a criticism of elite academic circles. Everything the aesthetic emulates is what some say Donna was tearing down in the book. I wonder if there is a divide between the aesthetic and the category of books that fall under it? Other ‘dark academia’ books also criticize and penalize esteemed academia and those who worship it.
That's a good point in terms of the divide. It's also interesting, at least to me, to consider how all this relates to the fact that “academia" as it has long been conceived is collapsing around us…
Im no expert but it seems like AI will makenit impossible for the old model to survive. At thensame time I think the wealthiestpeople will always want to send their children with thenither wealthy children, so skme vestige is likely to remain. I don't think Harvard is going anywhere!
Nice post. Can't believe you haven't snared a position yet, or how dispiriting that must be. Hang in there. Greatly appreciate the insights and education I get here.
It’s so interesting that you posted this now - my husband and I are both professors who specialize in medieval philosophy and contemplative/mystical thought, and we moved from Washington Heights to a Victorian house in rural Pennsylvania a year ago (when I had to go in long-term medical leave). So we have a running joke that we ARE Dark Academia! 🤣 Andy’s got a brutal commute into Brooklyn, and we both have to spend as much time on email as buried in arcana. But it’s been a blast leaning into the DA aesthetic, especially since it means we buy everything second- or fifth-hand, and I’ve been doing a tongue-in-cheek DA October series on Notes.
On a fiction-related note, I know that Tartt is often credited as the muse for the movement, but I think a huge part of DA’s popularity today comes from all the YA books set in dark magical schools - the inheritance of Harry Potter and the host of series influenced by it. All those kids who grew up dreaming about turret tower bedrooms and libraries with sentient books and secret powers are adults now, but they still love the taste of magic. And the authors of those books filled their worlds with people from all social classes and ethnicities - Naomi Novik’s wildly popular Scholamance series being a great example. So I think it’s more complex than a yearning for the Oxbridge life.
In any event, thank you for this! I love your posts. 😊
Thanks for this essay. It is challenging to think about. Looking at the pictures I am reminded of my grandmother who consistently looked back as an antiques dealer. Commenting on something modern, like central heating, she would put herself in a 1843 log cabin and amazed at how much they knew, compared with us with our automated lives to a man who could build a cabin and a woman who could sew with her hands, in times she could sit and sew and make a beautiful quilt by hand from scraps. She always said, in 1974, “ I was born in the wrong century” and she was talking about a dark view of life.
I appreciate this comment! I was born in 1981 and my grandfather in 1917. He built his own house with his two hands (and the hands of his friends) and rarely paid anyone to fix anything. Now I look at the toolchest he made me and sigh, because it is empty! I don't even have any tools. Obviously, many people today know how to fix things, and probably many back then did not, but the point is worth something. So much lost knowledge. I'm not sure that what I know that he didn't know is as valuable or centering as vice versa!
You sum up the biggest point perfectly in the first few sentences, dark academia is an aesthetic. I liken it to the misconception around being “goth” (someone who embodies the entire lifestyle) and being “gothic” (someone who draws from the aesthetic). There’s something in the idea and escapism of dark academia, that I spend sorrowful darkened afternoons pouring over ancient tomes. But the reality as you say is that the actual act of academia involves plenty of technology (I am literally sitting before my laptop looking over a digital archive of 17th century company records, listening to music via Bluetooth as I write). Great article! 😃
It is definitely academia as dreamed up to only contain elite universities (Oxbridge obviously but also St Andrews and - so long as you restrict yourself to the neo-Gothic main building - Glasgow). Similarly, the uniform has an upper middle class private school aesthetic to it.
Also, speaking as a late 40s extremely-bookish-yet-occasionally-practical individual, all that reading by candlelight is going to wreck their eyes later in life!
Thank you for standing up for the electric reading light. It's an unsung hero but a critical part of any decent life. I do most of my reading in bed and the only reason I haven't caught on fire is the clip light.
Regarding Gotfried Schalcken, ‘An Old Man writing a Book by Candlelight (1663-1706);
Frans van Mieris, ‘A Young Woman Writing a Letter’, detail (1635-81)
What deplorable generic titles! Schalcken’s Old Man is more likely writing a sermon than a book. Dutch old men of the seventeenth century were seldom literate enough to write a book. As for the van Mieris, the young woman, in her ermine lined garment, is obviously replying to a letter she had just read. Perhaps she replies to a love letter, from an unsuitable suitor, in the dark of night, by candlelight…
Those are the sort of titles that are put on when the original title has been lost. The first was probably intended to represent some ancient author whom the artist, or the artist's patron, admired. The second was probably a portrait and would have had the subject's name as its title. Those original titles wouldn't have been physically attached to the paintings because they were intended for display in the homes of private owners who weren't thinking about the fate of the paintings hundreds of years in the future. Then the owners or their heirs fell on hard times, any records documenting the papers would have been thrown away, and the paintings themselves auctioned off untitled.
You raise some nice insights & thoughts. I have to add & would love your take on this - that dark academia glorifies the past - by your writing it would appear as though this is a bad thing in this context but I cannot understand why? I see it as a neutral thing. I had the modern day university experience you described, and I personally much enjoyed creating a dark academia atmosphere around it. Perhaps for some with a more sensual nature it’s nicer to light a candle than eat cereal in a grey library while writing an essay, despite that being some people’s reality. I don’t believe dark academia is “ a lie” it’s just an alternative preference.
Enjoyable post, although I wouldn’t class ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ as dark academia. As far as I can remember it doesn’t feature any academia dark or otherwise?
I think Mr Ripley is more old money than dark academia. These two aesthetics have a lot in common in dynamics: romanticizing a privileged world, long gone or never existed.
I really enjoyed this! I’ve seen the phrase ‘dark academia’ all over Substack but never *really* known what it meant. Thanks for finally explaining it to me!
I think often the aesthetic "dark academia" is mixed up with the literary/film genre, in the same way there is a "Great Gatsby" aesthetic or people creating fight clubs/doing Patrick Bateman style 'self-care' that ironically misses the point of those books. Not to say I don't love the aesthetic of old books and cozy places to study (or a 1920s party), but the moral of the dark academia genre is how much the trappings of academia and scholarly obsession - and particularly where it intersects with money and status - can divorce people from reality and their sense of personal responsibility. It's about the illusion of unreality and blamelessness fostered by the way wealth and academia can insulate people, and the jarring results when they're brought back to earth - often through resulting death, hence the "dark" aspect.
It's funny that the movie versions are so steeped in aesthetic when the actual setting of The Secret History and several other novels are actually fairly bland small colleges, or perfectly mundane universities. Academia and status are drugs in these stories that alter perception, and the people that seek them out are already damaged and inflict that hurt on others in turn.
Children's stories like Harry Potter and the like aren't dark academia though because they lean into the truth of that unreality, rather than deconstruct it. They're just classic school stories, or hero tales, perhaps with some other dark aspects like villains or mystery or magic.
amused by "accusations" of dark academia when my desk just looks Iike that and I like burning candles because my dimmable desk light is garbage! the aesthetic is dreamy but not unattainable imo, but that depends on how hard the university part is important to someone trying to adhere to the vibe. you can, and I would encourage people to, study your entire life which to me means you can be dark academia all the time! there is however something to be said about how much DA relies on the idea that the *old stuff* is great. good research and art is still being produced, and you might know if you were genuinely concerned with learning.
One of the attractions of Dark Academia is that the aesthetic is achievable for a relatively modest outlay of money. Thus it allows frustrated academics making their living by waiting tables or doing freelance copyediting to borrow some of the prestige of the line of work they wished they were in.
It's also what academia is likely to look like in a future of economic and technological decline. When the grid fails and the internet goes down with it, the old buildings will still be around, as will the old books. Tweed is made of undyed wool and it's good for keeping a body warm in the absence of central heating. Dark Academia can thus be a means of psychological survival in a future not well endowed with opportunities for real upward mobility.
I had never thought of the comparison between Tumblr/Pinterest aesthetics to Vanitas paintings before, but it makes perfect sense. It's symbolism through photography. Feel like vast swathes of the internet just clicked into place for me, so thanks! I wonder how much Harry Potter is responsible for Dark Academia too, those movies were dripping in that aesthetic.
Probably a lot! I know that myself, I used to be very into Harry Potter as a young kid and it made me want to be a part of such university
His Dark Materials too!
Haha... some good points, for sure. Yes, "dark academia" is a fantasy - an Old World aesthetic for us romantics who do not share the taste for ultra-modernism in any form.
We love beauty, atmosphere, and have an appreciation for the classics. And, I guess, a certain nostalgia for the past - at least visually!
That said, Donna Tartt is an amazing novelist, first and foremost. I don't think this trend was something she had in mind when she wrote the novel; it developed as a result of the book's popularity.
I very much agree. From everything I've ever seen from or about Donna Tartt, she would be horrified to think that she'd inspired anything as silly as the fantasy we're talking about. "You're dumb," is my summation of what she would say to someone making tik-toks of themselves using a typewriter under a candle chandelier.
I agree… but I’d take it one step further. The secret history can definitely be interpreted as a warning and a criticism of elite academic circles. Everything the aesthetic emulates is what some say Donna was tearing down in the book. I wonder if there is a divide between the aesthetic and the category of books that fall under it? Other ‘dark academia’ books also criticize and penalize esteemed academia and those who worship it.
That's a good point in terms of the divide. It's also interesting, at least to me, to consider how all this relates to the fact that “academia" as it has long been conceived is collapsing around us…
Yes that too!! Do you think that there is a reformed idea of academia pushing through? Or that people are just done with it overall?
Im no expert but it seems like AI will makenit impossible for the old model to survive. At thensame time I think the wealthiestpeople will always want to send their children with thenither wealthy children, so skme vestige is likely to remain. I don't think Harvard is going anywhere!
Candles and dramatic low lighting are fun though!
No argument here!
Indeed...!
Nice post. Can't believe you haven't snared a position yet, or how dispiriting that must be. Hang in there. Greatly appreciate the insights and education I get here.
Thank you Denis :)
Agreed!
It’s so interesting that you posted this now - my husband and I are both professors who specialize in medieval philosophy and contemplative/mystical thought, and we moved from Washington Heights to a Victorian house in rural Pennsylvania a year ago (when I had to go in long-term medical leave). So we have a running joke that we ARE Dark Academia! 🤣 Andy’s got a brutal commute into Brooklyn, and we both have to spend as much time on email as buried in arcana. But it’s been a blast leaning into the DA aesthetic, especially since it means we buy everything second- or fifth-hand, and I’ve been doing a tongue-in-cheek DA October series on Notes.
On a fiction-related note, I know that Tartt is often credited as the muse for the movement, but I think a huge part of DA’s popularity today comes from all the YA books set in dark magical schools - the inheritance of Harry Potter and the host of series influenced by it. All those kids who grew up dreaming about turret tower bedrooms and libraries with sentient books and secret powers are adults now, but they still love the taste of magic. And the authors of those books filled their worlds with people from all social classes and ethnicities - Naomi Novik’s wildly popular Scholamance series being a great example. So I think it’s more complex than a yearning for the Oxbridge life.
In any event, thank you for this! I love your posts. 😊
Great piece. Though please do excuse my pedantry, but I believe 'Brideshead Revisited' wasn't a BBC show, but produced by Granada for ITV. ;)
Yes! You are right about this. The BBC one was 2021 - thanks for the correction :)
https://youtu.be/jVnkvM_v6N0?si=IydEoc8GK6a4df3R
Just thought, I leave this link here for those who haven't seen it – like me.
Thanks for this essay. It is challenging to think about. Looking at the pictures I am reminded of my grandmother who consistently looked back as an antiques dealer. Commenting on something modern, like central heating, she would put herself in a 1843 log cabin and amazed at how much they knew, compared with us with our automated lives to a man who could build a cabin and a woman who could sew with her hands, in times she could sit and sew and make a beautiful quilt by hand from scraps. She always said, in 1974, “ I was born in the wrong century” and she was talking about a dark view of life.
I appreciate this comment! I was born in 1981 and my grandfather in 1917. He built his own house with his two hands (and the hands of his friends) and rarely paid anyone to fix anything. Now I look at the toolchest he made me and sigh, because it is empty! I don't even have any tools. Obviously, many people today know how to fix things, and probably many back then did not, but the point is worth something. So much lost knowledge. I'm not sure that what I know that he didn't know is as valuable or centering as vice versa!
You sum up the biggest point perfectly in the first few sentences, dark academia is an aesthetic. I liken it to the misconception around being “goth” (someone who embodies the entire lifestyle) and being “gothic” (someone who draws from the aesthetic). There’s something in the idea and escapism of dark academia, that I spend sorrowful darkened afternoons pouring over ancient tomes. But the reality as you say is that the actual act of academia involves plenty of technology (I am literally sitting before my laptop looking over a digital archive of 17th century company records, listening to music via Bluetooth as I write). Great article! 😃
It is definitely academia as dreamed up to only contain elite universities (Oxbridge obviously but also St Andrews and - so long as you restrict yourself to the neo-Gothic main building - Glasgow). Similarly, the uniform has an upper middle class private school aesthetic to it.
Also, speaking as a late 40s extremely-bookish-yet-occasionally-practical individual, all that reading by candlelight is going to wreck their eyes later in life!
Thank you for standing up for the electric reading light. It's an unsung hero but a critical part of any decent life. I do most of my reading in bed and the only reason I haven't caught on fire is the clip light.
Regarding Gotfried Schalcken, ‘An Old Man writing a Book by Candlelight (1663-1706);
Frans van Mieris, ‘A Young Woman Writing a Letter’, detail (1635-81)
What deplorable generic titles! Schalcken’s Old Man is more likely writing a sermon than a book. Dutch old men of the seventeenth century were seldom literate enough to write a book. As for the van Mieris, the young woman, in her ermine lined garment, is obviously replying to a letter she had just read. Perhaps she replies to a love letter, from an unsuitable suitor, in the dark of night, by candlelight…
Those are the sort of titles that are put on when the original title has been lost. The first was probably intended to represent some ancient author whom the artist, or the artist's patron, admired. The second was probably a portrait and would have had the subject's name as its title. Those original titles wouldn't have been physically attached to the paintings because they were intended for display in the homes of private owners who weren't thinking about the fate of the paintings hundreds of years in the future. Then the owners or their heirs fell on hard times, any records documenting the papers would have been thrown away, and the paintings themselves auctioned off untitled.
You raise some nice insights & thoughts. I have to add & would love your take on this - that dark academia glorifies the past - by your writing it would appear as though this is a bad thing in this context but I cannot understand why? I see it as a neutral thing. I had the modern day university experience you described, and I personally much enjoyed creating a dark academia atmosphere around it. Perhaps for some with a more sensual nature it’s nicer to light a candle than eat cereal in a grey library while writing an essay, despite that being some people’s reality. I don’t believe dark academia is “ a lie” it’s just an alternative preference.
Enjoyable post, although I wouldn’t class ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ as dark academia. As far as I can remember it doesn’t feature any academia dark or otherwise?
I think Mr Ripley is more old money than dark academia. These two aesthetics have a lot in common in dynamics: romanticizing a privileged world, long gone or never existed.
Fascinating! I hadn't head of Dark Academia but I'm now intrigued - and on the look out for it. I do rather like it, I realise.....
I really enjoyed this! I’ve seen the phrase ‘dark academia’ all over Substack but never *really* known what it meant. Thanks for finally explaining it to me!
I think often the aesthetic "dark academia" is mixed up with the literary/film genre, in the same way there is a "Great Gatsby" aesthetic or people creating fight clubs/doing Patrick Bateman style 'self-care' that ironically misses the point of those books. Not to say I don't love the aesthetic of old books and cozy places to study (or a 1920s party), but the moral of the dark academia genre is how much the trappings of academia and scholarly obsession - and particularly where it intersects with money and status - can divorce people from reality and their sense of personal responsibility. It's about the illusion of unreality and blamelessness fostered by the way wealth and academia can insulate people, and the jarring results when they're brought back to earth - often through resulting death, hence the "dark" aspect.
It's funny that the movie versions are so steeped in aesthetic when the actual setting of The Secret History and several other novels are actually fairly bland small colleges, or perfectly mundane universities. Academia and status are drugs in these stories that alter perception, and the people that seek them out are already damaged and inflict that hurt on others in turn.
Children's stories like Harry Potter and the like aren't dark academia though because they lean into the truth of that unreality, rather than deconstruct it. They're just classic school stories, or hero tales, perhaps with some other dark aspects like villains or mystery or magic.
amused by "accusations" of dark academia when my desk just looks Iike that and I like burning candles because my dimmable desk light is garbage! the aesthetic is dreamy but not unattainable imo, but that depends on how hard the university part is important to someone trying to adhere to the vibe. you can, and I would encourage people to, study your entire life which to me means you can be dark academia all the time! there is however something to be said about how much DA relies on the idea that the *old stuff* is great. good research and art is still being produced, and you might know if you were genuinely concerned with learning.
very nice writeup!
One of the attractions of Dark Academia is that the aesthetic is achievable for a relatively modest outlay of money. Thus it allows frustrated academics making their living by waiting tables or doing freelance copyediting to borrow some of the prestige of the line of work they wished they were in.
It's also what academia is likely to look like in a future of economic and technological decline. When the grid fails and the internet goes down with it, the old buildings will still be around, as will the old books. Tweed is made of undyed wool and it's good for keeping a body warm in the absence of central heating. Dark Academia can thus be a means of psychological survival in a future not well endowed with opportunities for real upward mobility.
I really like this perspective