University Now Offering A Course On Taylor Swift.

Back in 2010 The University of South Carolina made international headlines when they began teaching a course on Lady Gaga. Here's a BBC story on that.

Now in 2022 The University of Texas wants some press. So they have begun a course on Taylor Swift.

The class is called “The Taylor Swift Songbook” and it’ll explore her songwriting. Her songs will be read alongside Shakespeare, Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, and Keats. Course texts include her albums “Folklore,” “Evermore,” “Lover,” and her reissue of “Red.”

The description of the course on UTA’s website shares that this course will use “the songwriting of pop music icon Taylor Swift to introduce literary critical reading and research methods-basic skills for work in English literature and other humanities disciplines.”

It also adds, “Focusing on Swift’s music and the cultural contexts in which it and her career are situated, we’ll consider frameworks for understanding her work, such as poetic form, style, and history among various matters and theoretical issues important to contextualisation as we practice close and in-depth reading, evaluating secondary sources, and building strong arguments.”

That sounds like some heady stuff but it breaks down to taking a course on Taylor Swift lyrics to learn how to build a strong argument. I can teach that course in one sentence. "I'm always right and if you disagree you're a hater".

Please call me Professor Nash henceforth.