Last month, Harvard announced that I would be teaching a class next semester called “Taylor Swift and Her World,” an open-enrollment lecture partly about Swift’s work and career and partly about literature (poems, novels, memoirs) that overlaps with, or speaks to, that work. When the news came out, my inbox blew up with dozens of requests, from as far away as New Zealand. Reporters wanted to know whether Swift would visit the course (not expecting her to), whether her online superfans were involved (some will be), whether Harvard approved (yes, at least so far), and, above all, why a Millennial pop star deserves this kind of treatment at a world-class university.
The Atlantic
English 183ts. Taylor Swift and Her World
Instructor: Stephanie Burt
Monday & Wednesday, 12:00-1:15pm | Location: TBD
Course Site
The first song on Taylor Swift's first record, released when she was 16, paid homage (by name) to a more established country artist. Today she's the most recognizable country-- or formerly country? or pop?-- artist in North America, if not the world: her songwriting takes in half a dozen genres, and her economic impact changes cities. We will move through Swift's own catalogue, including hits, deep cuts, outtakes, re-recordings, considering songwriting as its own art, distinct from poems recited or silently read.
We will learn how to study fan culture, celebrity culture, adolescence, adulthood and appropriation; how to think about white texts, Southern texts, transatlantic texts, and queer subtexts. We will learn how to think about illicit affairs, and hoaxes, champagne problems and incomplete closure. We will look at her precursors, from Dolly Parton to the Border Ballads, and at work about her (such as the documentary "Miss Americana"). And we will read literary works important to her and works about song and performance, with novels, memoirs and poems by (among others) Willa Cather, James Weldon Johnson, Tracey Thorn, and William Wordsworth.
https://english.fas.harvard.edu/english-183ts-taylor-swift-and-her-worldThe valorisation of the banal.
Don't let your kids enrol in English departments at uni.
We will learn....
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