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

Susan Hopkins; Kieran Balloo; Fabiane Ramos; Raquel Salmeron; Niharika Singh; Victoria E. Wilson

doi:10.1080/14759551.2024.2394461

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

Journal article

Open access

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

Susan Hopkins, Kieran Balloo, Fabiane Ramos, Raquel Salmeron, Niharika Singh and Victoria E. Wilson

Culture and Organization, Vol.32(3), pp.159-175

2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14759551.2024.2394461

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Abstract

enabling education

collective story

dark academia

widening participation

pathways education

neoliberalism

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.

Details

Title: True encounters with the fictional university: collectively rewriting the script of filmic dark academia from the academic margins
Authors: Susan Hopkins (Corresponding Author) - University of Southern Queensland
Kieran Balloo - University of Southern Queensland
Fabiane Ramos - University of Southern Queensland
Raquel Salmeron - University of Southern Queensland
Niharika Singh - University of Southern Queensland
Victoria E. Wilson - University of Southern Queensland
Publication details: Culture and Organization, Vol.32(3), pp.159-175
Publisher: Routledge
Date published: 2026
DOI: 10.1080/14759551.2024.2394461
ISSN: 1477-2760
Copyright note: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Organisation Unit: School of Education and Tertiary Access
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991135204702621
Output Type: Journal article

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