True encounters with the fictional university: collectively rewriting the script of filmic dark academia from the academic margins

Abstract

Portrayals of teachers, students and universities in the popular cultural texts of dark academia are far removed from the lived realities of teaching academics in the contemporary, digital, neoliberal university. Pathways educators, who teach large numbers of non-traditional students in tertiary preparation programmes mostly online, are almost completely silenced in much of popular and academic discourse about the idealised university. This paper disrupts such romanticised representations of academia through personal reflections on four well-known films aligned with dark academia subcultures: Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, The Riot Club and Mona Lisa Smile. Through their first voice writings, six pathways educators working together at a regional Australian university come together to flip the script on the fantasy academy. From six diverse origin stories, a collective voice emerges, telling a new, co-written story based on our lived experiences of teaching and learning from the underrepresented margins of the neoliberal academy.