Changes: Dark Academia

Revision as of 22:23, 10 May 2021

This page is currently in the process of being re-written.

Dark academia is a popular academic aesthetic that revolves around classic literature, the pursuit of self-discovery, and a general passion for knowledge and learning. It is one of several variations, each with a unique subject focus. Dark academia's best-known visual variations stem primarily from European cultures.

People who use this aesthetic are usually referred to as dark academics.

Criticism

Aestheticization of unhealthy behavior

Dark academia has been criticized for its apparent encouragement of unhealthy behavior in the pursuit of both the aesthetic itself and academic achievement.^[1]^[2] Stress and procrastination related to education, depression and its symptoms, unhealthy sleep habits, including both under and oversleeping, and excessive consumption of coffee, are frequently referenced and discussed in dark academic communities.

Western Eurocentrism

Dark academia focuses predominantly on languages, literature, architecture, art, poetry and fashion originating from Western Europe and has been consequently criticized as Eurocentric. Many dark academics have rejected an exclusionary interpretation of dark academia and encouraged academics to include non-Western languages, literature, architecture, and clothing in their conceptions and use of the aesthetic.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Latin, ancient Greek, English, and French are popular in dark academia both as subjects of linguistic study and in aesthetic images of text. Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical architecture are featured frequently in dark academic images.

Visuals

Antique books
Art museums, with people interacting and viewing the art
Blood, poison, and other murder imagery
British estates, especially oak-paneled rooms
British moors
Boarding school-related imagery such as uniforms and sneaking out
Campuses of prestigious universities such as Oxford and Harvard
Chateaus and palaces
Coffee and tea
Comparatives/parallels/collections, which are short compilations of 5-10 quotes from poetry, literature, or scripts from different works that center around one motif such as "the kitchen table" and "women and horror." Occassionally, paintings or photographs may be included.
Daggers
Desks that showcase the OP's stationary collection
Forests at night
Fountain pens
Gothic and Beaux-Arts architecture
Homoeroticism
Newspapers at cafes
Paintings in the Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Academic, Aesthetic, and Pre-Raphaelite periods
Quotes and typography
Typewriters
Rain, fog, and overcast weather
Sculpture in the Classical, Hellenistic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical periods
Smoking
Streets of antique European cities such as Paris and Florence

Inspirations

Books

Please do not list books by authors in the list below. By author surname:

The Women in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe
Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo
The Lessons by Naomi Alderman
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
Bunny by Mona Awad
Possession by A.S. Byatt
The Shakespeare Secret by Jennifer Lee Carrell
The Glass Essay by Anne Carson
Belle du Seigneur by Albert Cohen
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
A Study In Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Bacchae and Medea by Euripides
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Maurice by E. M. Forster
The Magus by John Fowles
The Likeness by Tana French
Mythos, Heroes and Troy by Stephen Fry
The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman
The Lie Tree by Frances Harding
The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones
Dead Poets Society by N.H. Kleinbaum
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Nada by Carmen Laforet
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Oleanna by David Mamet
The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller
Songs of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Starless Sea - Erin Morgenstern
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by John Milton
I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
The Satyricon by Petronius
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio
The Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Frankenstein, or: A Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Antigone by Sophocles
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Truants by Kate Weinberg
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

Authors

By author surname:

Dante Alighieri
Maya Angelou
Aristotle
Jane Austen
James Baldwin
Beat Generation (post-war literary movement)
The Brontë sisters
Albert Camus
Geoffrey Chaucer
Emily Dickinson
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Federico García Lorca
Nicolai Gogol
Homer
Shirley Jackson
Franz Kafka
John Keats
Count Lautréamont
H.P. Lovecraft
Milton
Vladimir Nabokov
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sylvia Plath
Plato
Edgar Allan Poe
Alexander Pushkin
Arthur Rimbaud
Sappho
V.E. Schwab
William Shakespeare
Sophocles
Noel Streatfield
Donna Tartt
Leo Tolstoy
Virgil
Walt Whitman
Oscar Wilde
Virginia Woolf

Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan, Left) and Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe, Right), both have their hands held out as if to 'high-five'. Allen's palm is visible to the audience reveling a gash down the center, Lucien is holding the knife they used with his other hand. The characters are performing a 'Blood Oath' while at a party. — Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan, Left) and Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe, Right) are performing a blood oath while at a party.

Movies

By year released:

The Invisible Man (1933)
Rope (1948)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Dial M for Murder (1954)
Compulsion (1959)
If... (1968)
Suspiria (1977 or 2018)
Another Country (1984)
Maurice (1987)
Withnail & I (1987)
The Unnameable (1988)
The Chocolate War (1988)
True Believer (1989)
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Metropolitan (1990)
Scent of a Woman (1992)
School Ties (1992)
Peter's Friends (1992)
Shallow Grave (1994)
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Immortal Beloved (1994)
Total Eclipse (1995)
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Wilde (1997)
The Ninth Gate (1999)
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Wonder Boys (2000)
The Emperor's Club (2002)
The Pianist (2002)
The Dreamers (2003)
Bright Young Things (2003)
Mona Lisa Smile (2003)
Capote (2005)
Like Minds (2006)
The Prestige (2006)
The Great Debaters (2007)
Brideshead Revisited (2008)
Detachment (2011)
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Kill Your Darlings (2013)
The Imitation Game (2014)
Testament of Youth (2014)
The Riot Club (2014)
The Theory of Everything (2014)
Victor Frankenstein (2015)
The Danish girl (2015)
The Bookstore (2017)
Phantom Thread (2017)
Disobedience (2017)
Colette (2018)
Mary Shelley (2018)
Vita & Virginia (2018)
The Nightingale (2018)
Tolkien (2019)
Elisa y Marcela (2019)
Knives Out (2019)
Las Niñas (2020)
Shirley (2020)

Podcasts

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities
Dark Dice
Lore
Myths & Legends
The Magnus Archives
The Penumbra Podcast
Prose Talk
Unwell A Midwestern Gothic Mystery
Unobscured
The White Vault

TV Shows

The Alienist
Ares
Deadly Class
Elementary
Endeavour
Freud
Gentleman Jack
Hannibal
His Dark Materials
House of Anubis
How To Get Away With Murder
Mindhunter
Murdoch Mysteries
The Magicians
The Nevers
The Night Gallery
Ordeal By Innocence
Penny Dreadful
Pennyworth
Poldark
Prodigal Son
The Queen's Gambit
Sherlock
Taboo
The Umbrella Academy

Anime & manga

91 Days
Ancient Magus Bride
Baccano
Black Butler (especially the Public School Arc)
Black Museum: The Ghost and the Lady
Bungou Stray Dogs
The Cat Returns
Code Geass
Colorful
Doukyuusei
From Up on Poppy Hill
Fullmetal Alchemist
Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo
The Garden of Words
Gosick
Hyouka
Joker Game
Little Witch Academy
Monster
Moriarty the Patriot
The Promised Neverland
The Royal Tutor
Saga of Tanya the Evil
Snow White with the Red Hair
Steamboy
Vampire Knight
Violet Evergarden
Whisper of the Heart
Tales from Earthsea
The Wind Rises
Your Name

Plays

Another Country
The Inheritance
Spring Awakening
Total Eclipse

Musicals

The Count of Monte Cristo
Dogfight
Frankenstein: A New Musical
Hadestown
Jekyll & Hyde
Light in the Plazza
Natasha Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812
Phantom of the Opera
Spring Awakening
Sweeney Todd
Twisted

Artists

Sofonisba Anguissola
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Caravaggio
Camille Claudel
Roberto Ferri
Artemisia Gentileschi
Vincent Willem Van Gogh
Trevor Henderson
Jenny Holzer
Alfred Kubin
Michelangelo
Maldha Mohamed
Claude Monet
Raphaël
Rembrandt
Leonardo Da Vinci

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Music

This page is going to be rewritten.

Musicians

Albums

Songs

Breezeblocks, Fitzpleasure by Alt-J
Symphony No.9 "From the new world" by Antonín Dvořák
Do I Wanna Know? by Arctic Monkeys
Icarus by Bastille
Goodnight Socialite by The Brobecks
Dionysus by The Buttertones
For the Damaged Coda by Blonde Redhead
Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens
Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex
Claire de Lune, La Mer by Claude Debussy
Yellow by Coldplay
Dreams by The Cranberries
Piano Concerto Op.54 by Edvard Grieg
Symphony No.8 "Unfinished" by Felix Mendelssohn
Violin Concerto No.2 by Felix Mendelssohn
Dog Days Are Over, Seven Devils, Shake It Out by Florence and the Machine
The French Library by Franz Gordon
Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 by Franz Liszt
Piano Trio No.2 by Franz Schubert
Etude No.11 by Frédéric Chopin
Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths
We Fell in Love in October by Girl in Red
Cherry Wine, Dinner and Diatribes, Take Me To Church, Wasteland, Baby! by Hozier
Hungarian Dance No.1 by Johannes Brahms
Babooshka, Cloudbusting by Kate Bush
Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have - but I Have It, Pretty When You Cry, Video Games, Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey
I Want to Feel Alive by Lighthouse and the Whaler
The Louvre, Sober (II), Writer in the Dark by Lorde
Piano Concerto No.3, Piano Sonata No.8 "Pathétique" by Ludwig van Beethoven
Body, Burning Pile, Oh Ana by Mother Mother
A Little Death, Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood
Ann Wants to Dance by Papooz
Lotta True Crime by Penelope Scott
Pruit Igoe by Phillip Glass
Feed the Machine by Poor Mans Poison
Dr Mabuse by Propaganda
Danse Russe (Moderato / Swan Lake Act 3) Violin Concerto by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Piano Sonata No.2 by Robert Schumann
Piano Concerto No.2, Sonata for 2 Violins Op.56 by Sergei Prokofiev
Piano concerto No.2, Prelude No.5 by Sergei Rachmaninoff
Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega
Breakout by Swing Out Sister
Persephone by Tamino
Theme for Bioshock 1
Reflections by Toshifumi Hinata
Your Woman by White Town
Fantasia in D Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Cape Town by The Young Veins
Nocturnal waltz - Johannes Bornlöf
O children - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Comics

An Unkindness of Ravens
Deadly Class
Fangs
Hooky
Morning Glories
Promethea
Purple Hyacinth
The Umbrella Academy
Unwritten
Your Throne

A violin rests on a bed of open faced books featuring sheets of music.

Activities

Sports

Rowing
Fencing
Tennis
Badminton
Cricket
Rugby
Golf
Swimming
Polo
Equestrian sports
Running
Javelin, discus, wrestling while covered in oil (ancient Grecian Olympics)
Archery
Ballet, ballroom dancing, any traditional dance works
Pool (cue sports)

Black and white image of white men playing chess.

Games

Chess
Croquet
Backgammon
Cards: rummy, poker, blackjack, speed, whist, etc.

Video Games

1917: The Prologue
Alicemare
Alter Ego
Bloodborne
Call of Cthulhu
Corpse Party
Danganronpa series
Detention
Dishonored
GrimGrimoire
Ib
Layers of Fear
The Last Door Season 1
Mad Father
Persona 5
The Metamorphosis
The Room VR: A Dark Matter
Rusty Lake game series
Vampyr
What Never Was

Crafts

Realistic drawing
Calligraphy
Painting
Bookbinding

Outings

Museums
Art galleries
Places of historical interest
Pubs, bars, and cafés
Parks and gardens
Places of worship
Graveyards
Theaters
The opera
Concerts
Libraries
Art stores
Bookshops
Special events
Independent bookstores

Other

Write essays
Research
Daydream
Read
Perform a play alone or to a pet
Play or practice an instrument
Fake your death
Draw or paint something
Reflect on the past
Journal
Admire cityscape/nature

Fashion

The main inspiration for Dark Academic fashion comes from 1940s prep school uniforms. Elements of the 1950s suburban American preppy look are often incorporated, such as sweater vests or sweaters worn tied over the shoulders. The main colour scheme is black, grey, beige, brown, cream, ivory, dark green, burgundy, and soft yellow. Usual fabric choices are more upscale, like cashmere, wool, and tweed, but linen and cotton are also very common. Accessories are usually minimal, like bracelets, rings, pendants, watches, cuff-links, and other dapper add-on pieces.

Tumblr 6a25622fdda202d1e5d838f2954b3c50 8a71433a 640

Stores & Brands

Cottagecore Fashion (Contains elements of Dark Academia.)
Orezoria
Linennaive
COS
Storets
Boutique 1861
Miss Patina
J Crew
Aritzia
Ralph Lauren
Jane Marple
Stories
Na-kd
Etsy - Dark Academia

Tops

Turtlenecks
Oxford shirts
Fisherman's sweaters
Sweater vests
Light blouses
Large polo necks
Cable knit jumpers
Sailor-collar shirts
Jumpers
Shirt dresses
A-Line dresses
Blousons
Drop waist dress

Tumblr de1c5b8eaf6e37ea6464a5f2f58b721c 96fccb7c 640

Bottoms

Dress pants
Ankle pants
High rise pants
Trousers
Cigarette pants
Linen shorts
Tweed trousers
Plaid skirts
Mid-length or long skirts
Pinafore
Sailor skirts
Pleated skirts
Pencil skirts

Tumblr 3bdd6b40ae71a843320841b027b60423 9db693cd 640

Outerwear

Cardigans
Blazers
Waistcoats
Pea coats
Suit jackets
Trenchcoats
Overcoats
Duffle coats
Chesterfield coat
Coat dresses
Smock
Dark coloured apron

Shoes

Oxfords/brogues
Loafers
Wingtips
Boat shoes
Dr. Martens
Mary Janes
Chelsea Boots

Accessories

Silver or gold jewelry
Broaches
Simple rings
Satchel
Wire-frame glasses
Short, neat fingernails
Belts that match your shoes
Knee-high socks
Watches
Sweaters tied over the shoulders
Undone or loosely tied ties
Dark-colored umbrellas
Kerchiefs/bandanas

Gallery

Dark Academia Moodboard by Preposterous-Thoughts on Tumblr

Resources

Reddit

Discord Servers

Dark Academics (16+)

References

[1] ttps://lil-bit-of-a-mess.tumblr.com/post/636320046655881216/listen-i-love-dark-academia-i-really-do-it

[2] ttps://sonderstudy.tumblr.com/post/190984411818/my-two-cents-on-dark-academia

[3] ttps://sappylittlebitch.tumblr.com/post/620401404176154624/cultural-dark-academia

[4] ttps://punkenglishnerd.tumblr.com/post/189453466668/to-all-the-people-saying-can-i-still-be-a-dark

[5] ttps://ataphya.tumblr.com/post/645623340466339840/also

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

@@ Line 508: / Line 508: @@
 *Alicemare
 *Alter Ego
-*Amnesia: The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs, & Rebirth
 *Bloodborne
+*Call of Cthulhu
-*Bully (series)
-*Call of Cthulhu
 *Corpse Party
 *Danganronpa series
@@ Line 524: / Line 522: @@
 *The Metamorphosis
 *The Room VR: A Dark Matter
-*Trivia Murder Party
 *Rusty Lake game series
 *Vampyr
 *What Never Was
 ===Crafts===