Academia and Higher Learning in Popular Culture (Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture)

✍ Scribed by Marcus K. Harmes (editor), Richard Scully (editor)

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 278
• Edition: 1st ed. 2023
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This edited volume focuses on the cultural production of knowledge in the academy as mediated or presented through film and television. This focus invites scrutiny of how the academy itself is viewed in popular culture from The Chair to Terry Pratchett's ‘Unseen University’ and Doctor Who's Time Lord Academy among others. Spanning a number of genres and key film and television series, the volume is also inherently interdisciplinary with perspectives from History, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, STEM, and more. This collection brings together leading experts in different disciplines and from different national backgrounds. It emphasises that even at a point of mass, global participation in higher education, the academy is still largely mediated by popular culture and understood through the tropes perpetuated via a multimedia landscape.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Chapter 1: Unseen Universities and Seen Academics: An Introduction
Academia: History and Emergence into Fiction
Stereotypes and Realities
Being Academic: Life Learns from Art
Types of Academia
Spoiler Alert: Overview of the Volume
Chapter 2: Absurdism and Entanglement as an Academic Parallel in Terry Pratchett’s “Unseen University”
Unseen University: Architecture and Absurdity
Satirizing the Academy in Unseen University
Pedagogy at Unseen University
Reading Unseen University into the Real World: Decoloniality and Critical Approaches to Pedagogy
An Ecology of Knowledge
Absurdity and Entanglement: What Now?
Chapter 3: A Well-Rounded Dick? Academia in  3rd Rock from the Sun
Humanities and “STEM”
Gender in Academia
Conclusion
Chapter 4: “I Am a Doctor of Many Things”: Tracking the Doctor’s Relationship to the Academy Across Doctor Who
“Doctor of Many Things”
Absence
Ambivalence
Acceptance
Conclusion
Chapter 5: “Do What You Like with Him”: Sherlock Holmes’ Academic Training and How It Changed over Time
Adapting Sherlock Holmes
Victorian Beginnings and Frontier Science
Midlife Crisis: A Parody, but Not a Parody
The Golden Age of Knowledge
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Women in the Ivory Tower: Historical Memory and the Heroic Educator in Mona Lisa Smile (2003)
Wellesley College and Women’s Higher Education
Historical Memory of Women in the Ivory Tower
Teacher Centrality, Pedagogy, and Pastoral Care
Conclusion: “The Lady with the Mystic Smile”
Chapter 7: Gods and Monsters in the Ruined University: Filmic Teachers and Their Moral Pedagogies from The Faculty to  Higher Learning
Playing God: Fantasy Versus Reality
Pain as Pedagogy: Marathon Man (1976) and Professor Bisenthal’s Seminar
Sage and Savant? Good Will Hunting (1997) and the Myth of the Natural Genius
The Harassed Professor: From Gross Misconduct (1993) to Cheat (2018)
Monstrous Teachers: From The Faculty (1998) to Bad Teacher (2011)
Oxford Dreaming and the Classed University: Class (1983), Oxford Blues (1984) and The Riot Club (2014)
Conclusions: Good-Bye, Professor Bisenthal
Chapter 8: A Different Sort of Monster: Science Fiction Casts a Spotlight on the Problematic Power Dynamics of Graduate Programs
The Chair (2021) and Power Relationships in the Academy
Mentors and Menaces in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1993) and Timeline (1999)
Fraternizing in the Field: Legion of the Dead (2005) and Magma (2006)
Hard Physics and Hook-Ups
Identifying the Monster
Chapter 9: Dystopian Higher Education: A Neoliberal Legacy
The Neoliberal Past
An Unlucky Category
Political Puppets, Small-Scale Models of Power
A Time of Calamity
Conditioned Belief
Chapter 10: Dark Comedies/Dark Universities: Negotiating the Neoliberal Institution in British Satirical Comedies The History Man (1981), A Very Peculiar Practice (1986–1988), and Campus (2011)
The History Man
A Very Peculiar Practice
Campus
The University
University Staff
University Students
Conclusion
Chapter 11: A Doctor Who Academy for Dystopian Times
To Tell the Truth (CBS Daytime Game Show), 1956–1968
The Doctor and the Academy
Using Doctor Who in the Academy: Teaching with the Doctor
Doctor Who as the Academy: Informal Learning with the Doctor
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 12: Conclusions
Bibliography
Index