Romanticising Academia: An Aesthetic and Beyond

it's not all about long wool coats, you know (or is it?)

While we focus on dark academia as a literary genre as it originated, it’s undeniable that in general pop culture, dark academia is first and foremost an aesthetic.

An aesthetic with a very distinct vibe, fashion, season, lifestyle and set of interests that come along with it, all creating a romance around academia and everything that comes along with it.

There’s definitely an element of necessity behind some forms of this romanticising: being at college or university is stressful, it’s expensive and it’s a huge commitment for two to four years of your life to complete a qualification and for hard things that take a lot of work, romanticising is sometimes necessary to get through the day, the week, the term.

But it also sets unrealistic expectations of the experience and the aesthetic side of dark academia can be very exclusionary in its parameters of what is dark academia.