“A Morbid Longing for the Picturesque”: The Affective Aesthetics of Dark Academia Fiction
Yagmur Su has joined the Graduate School Practices of Literature in the fall of 2023 with a dissertation project on “dark academia” texts. Drawing from aesthetics and affect theory, in her dissertation, she aims to conduct a comprehensive study of dark academia as a contemporary literary microgenre with an emphasis on the affective potential of these texts’ atmospheric qualities.
This project considers dark academia an important example where literary production and digital mediations of aesthetics intersect, arguing that its study can provide valuable insights into the generative role of affective attachments in the proliferation and popularization of literary genres and cultural trends in the digital era. With careful consideration of the tensions inherent in dark academia texts, the affective experience of enchantment they generate is contextualized as contingent upon the existing cultural notions of liberal education and good taste. Through a practice of close reading of chosen texts and social media posts, this dissertation offers analyses of enchantment and disenchantment as aesthetically-motivated and felt experiences — both within and in response to dark academia texts. This dissertation bridges the gap between dark academia as a microgenre and dark academia as an online aesthetic and a marker of identity, highlighting the importance of affective attachments built around the aesthetic properties and atmosphere of texts for the emergence and development of this multifaceted cultural phenomenon.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Silvia Schultermandl & Prof. Dr. Corinna Norrick-Rühl