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Taylor Swift is everywhere. You’re hard-pressed to find a piece of pop culture she hasn’t touched. The 34-year-old starlet is beloved by the masses. Swifties are no strangers to taking their fandom of the star to a whole new level. They are now celebrating her in the classroom because why not? Those who joke their lives are dedicated to the pop star are dedicating a portion of their academic careers to her and getting credit for it. There are a number of schools around the country offering classes that relate to Taylor Swift and her artistry.
Almost 10 Different Schools Are Currently Offering Classes About Swift
Nearly a dozen schools around the country are already offering Taylor Swift-inspired classes, and they’re very popular. At Berklee College of Music, Professor Scarlet Keys is in her fourth semester teaching “Songs of Taylor Swift.” The class is dedicated to dissecting the songwriter’s technique. Similarly, Stanford University student Ava Jeffs is teaching “The Last Great American Songwriter: Storytelling With Taylor Swift Through the Eras.”
The same semester as Berklee’s inaugural run of the class, students at Harvard were introduced to “Taylor Swift and Her World. The class, taught by Stephanie Burt, has students study how Swift’s music intersects with significant pieces in the literary cannon. Another similar course is offered at Ghent University in Belgium — “Literature: Taylor’s Version.”
At Arizona State University, Ph.D. student Alexandra Wormley has taken on teaching “Psychology of Taylor Swift,” relating different albums from the singer to different psychological concepts.
In addition to these schools, you can find Taylor Swift-inspired courses at more and more levels around the globe. The University of Texas at Austin, New York University, Rice University in Houston, are just some of the others offering Swifties the chance to learn about Taylor. Because these classes are so popular, more schools are planning on incorporating them.
Ironically, the Singer Doesn’t Have a College Degree
Taylor Swift was busy making history as a young star, and as a result, she didn’t have time for the college experience. Swift attended Henderson High School in Tennessee for two years before finishing her degree while touring and recording. Because she never got a normal end to her educational career, she’s done a lot to encourage others to.
Swift does, however, have an honorary doctorate from New York University, where she delivered the 2022 Commencement speech.
I never got to have the normal college experience, per se. I went to public high school until tenth grade and finished my education doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road on a radio tour, which sounds incredibly glamorous but in reality it consisted of a rental car, motels, and my mom and I pretending to have loud mother daughter fights with each other during boarding so no one would want the empty seat between us on Southwest.
As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I’d hang on the wall of my freshmen dorm. I even set the ending of my music video for my song “Love Story” at my fantasy imaginary college, where I meet a male model reading a book on the grass and with one single glance, we realize we had been in love in our past lives. Which is exactly what you guys all experienced at some point in the last 4 years, right?
But I really can’t complain about not having a normal college experience to you because you went to NYU during a global pandemic, being essentially locked into your dorms or having to do classes over Zoom. Everyone in college during normal times stresses about test scores, but on top of that you also had to pass like a thousand COVID tests. I imagine the idea of a normal college experience was all you wanted too. But in this case you and I both learned that you don’t always get all the things in the bag that you selected from the menu in the delivery service that is life. You get what you get. And as I would like to say to you, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it. Today you leave New York University and then you go out into the world searching for what’s next. And so will I.
