“What is up With the Dude Wall?”: An Examination of Academic Portraiture, Race, and Gender in Dear White People, The Chair, and Master

Abstract This article provides an examination of the ways in which academic portraiture is deconstructed in three contemporary visual narratives whose academic protagonists are women of color, the Netflix series Dear White People (2017-2021), which is based on the 2014 film of the same name, both of which were created by Justin Simien; the 2021 Netflix series The Chair, created by Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman; and the 2022 film Master directed by Mariama Diallo. In all three narratives, institutional portraits of white men are overdetermined as symbols of a foundational, historical, and omnipresent white supremacist misogyny that permeates higher education. Furthermore, these portraits serve to frame these narratives by conveying characters’ positions as both products of and confrontational to an academic nostalgia for the past conveyed through the prevalence of portraits of wealthy white men – and the white male gaze – who have shaped and continues to shape and determine the white supremacist story of higher education in the United States.