‘The Taylor Swift Songbook’ as University of Texas course: Everything we know so far

Taylor Swift is set to be honored in the United States academe again, months after receiving an honorary doctorate from New York University, as the University of Texas will offer a class about her.

Taylor Swift, one of the best-selling musicians of all time, continues to have an impact on music and literature, inspiring academics to create specialized courses to study her art.

This was not the first time Taylor’s diverse discography inspired a class. Earlier this year, the New York University Tisch School of the Arts offered a similar program.

According to Billboard, the University of Texas is introducing a new English course that will focus on Taylor Swift’s rich literature – her award-winning songs.

The “Taylor Swift Songbook” will be available to undergraduate students in the University of Texas Liberal Arts Honors program by the fall of 2022.

The Taylor Swift UT course, titled “Literary Contests and Contexts – The Taylor Swift Songbook,” will focus primarily on Swift’s literary traditions in her songwriting process.

The course would not only study Taylor’s work, but also that of literary giants such as Wyatt, Keats, Plath, Dickinson, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.

Students at the University of Texas, on the other hand, may need to relax because they will not be spending hours studying literature from previous generations.

A Spotify account is recommended because the “Taylor Swift Songbook” course includes the albums “Lover,” “Folklore,” “Evermore,” and “Red (Taylor’s Version)” as required texts.

English Professor Elizabeth Scala said regarding the course:

“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.”

Scala, a Swiftie at heart, will teach the course as a literature class rather than a music class.

Last February, New York University’s Tisch School of Arts offered a similar class, but from a music perspective, deconstructing her aversions and appeal through analyses of her music and public discourse about her career.