“The Taylor Swift Songbook” will be offered as an undergraduate course this fall semester, per the school’s liberal arts honors program.
This is a course on her songs as literary writing and the ways a popular and award-winning writer uses the same literary devices, figures, and tropes of traditional poetry in her work. It is not about celebrity or fame.
They’ll be asked to analyze and contextualize common practices and problems across the centuries.
I want to take what Swift fans can already do at a sophisticated level, tease it out for them a bit with a different vocabulary, and then show them how, in fact, Swift draws on richer literary traditions in her songwriting, both topically but also formally in terms of how she uses references, metaphors, and clever manipulations of words.
I’ll be showing students that these operations and interpretive moves one makes when reading her songs are appropriate to all forms of writing.
I think it’s important to connect the curriculum to the present, but I’m not willing to cede the past. This is my way of sneaking the older material back in with relevance.
English Professor Elizabeth Scala told CNN, who says Swift was chosen because she writes her own lyrics that can ‘can help illuminate similar techniques from classic poetry.’
CNN added,
‘The class will mostly focus on songs from Swift’s recent albums, but students are free to bring up older songs for discussion, Scala said. With most of the lyrics posted online and the songs available on Apple Music or Spotify, students don’t have to buy music for the class, [Scala] said. The course also will address topics such as gender, authenticity, fans’ influence on artists and writers, and how language history and linguistic traditions enrich the reading experience, Scala said.’
New York University offered a similar class last spring, with Swift giving the commencement speech.
This same UT Austin offered a course in 2015 called “Beyoncé Feminism, Rihanna Womanism,” to further study of Black feminism.
‘Other universities also have made headlines for courses centered on pop stars, including the University of Copenhagen’s “Beyoncé, Gender and Race” and a University of South Carolina sociology course dedicated to the work of Lady Gaga.
Next spring, Texas State University will offer a class on British pop singer Harry Styles,’ CNN concluded.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.
Psalm 12:8
This sounds like a lot of “trouble, trouble, trouble!” All really bad puns aside, this is par for the course for American and Western [D]education and indoctrination: teaching people to analyze some whore’s music about how she routinely meets the ‘man of her dreams,’ and then writes an entire album lamenting about her breakup and how men are the bane of her existence.
As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart.
Proverbs 25:20
These types of classes most colleges are more commonplace than people realize, and yes, people do take them.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
The WinePress needs your support! If God has laid it on your heart to want to contribute, please prayerfully consider donating to this ministry. If you cannot gift a monetary donation, then please donate your fervent prayers to keep this ministry going! Thank you and may God bless you.
Oh boy, where do I enroll to take classes on that oversized teenybopper’s music?!?! Maybe I can be a Taylor Swift philosopher or a Swiftologist! Haha I’m being sarcastic, don’t panic.
This is idolatry being taken to the next step, offering phony baloney classes based on their music that, if my ears could puke they would.
She’s my age (also born in 1989) and she’s making these hokey songs about the “man of her dreams” and then makes a whole album that’s a pity party on how because one guy rejected her, all men are pigs.
Well, maybe he broke up with you because you irritated and defied the crud out of him with your crush/having a crush on him crap! Women want a real man and guess what, the same is true for men: men want a woman not some little teenybopper, it’s time to grow up!
UT Austin, I should’ve known. Austin, Texas is a liberal city it’s like the San Francisco of Texas.
A BA in liberal arts with a minor in Taylor Swift studies, future career: janitor.
And here’s another way for people to waste their precious life’s time, instead of serving the Lord Jesus… sigh
Not to mention, waste their money!
Higher education is a total mockery and the piling high student loan debts are yanking the economy down, only to have a useless class like this?
What’s next? A course in Beyoncé? A major in Guns N Roses? A minor in Jay-Z?
Meanwhile, not only China owns the majority of America’s industries and land, but they’re accelerating exceptionally in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) and some of them are becoming officers for the People’s Liberation Army.
America is majoring in useless degrees and living a life of debt and resorting to working blue collar lower level entry jobs…with a bachelors degree.
Wow – this is really weird. Not just the stupid class studying the lyrics of Satan revealed to the he/she, but that my sister was just telling me yesterday how her son had a school assignment very similar to this. Last year, he was in 8th grade and one of his English class assignments was to study and analyze a writing and present his findings to the class.
The writings were to be chosen off a list given by the teacher. One would assume this list would contain the writings, possibly poems, of the authors of old. Nope. Every single one of the choices was a (devil inspired) song. As she studied the list, she told me the “best” one she found was the 1970’s song “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor.
Needless to say, her son is now in a Christian school. (No comments, please, about how she should home school. She is a newly single mom – she divorced an abusive husband – and is doing all she can right now. Please pray with us that God will open a door for her to be able to stay at home – instead of having to work outside the home – so she can bring her son home and home school him. Her daughter is 17 and is able to home school, but her son cannot home school if my sister is not home with him.)
Reading this from India, I know things are going insane. I am an engineering professor and we don’t get kids interested in engineering anymore. Kids here listen to Taylor Swift and feel they are entitled to comfort and laziness.