Whether you are in her top 0.5% of Spotify listeners or only listen to her music when forced to while shopping, it is safe to say that we have all had a run-in with Taylor Swift. But for people in Lowell Lecture Hall every Monday and Wednesday from 12:00-1:15 P.M., what was once their guilty pleasure and hobby is now their English homework.
As announced by the College last fall, Professor Stephanie Burt has heralded in a new wave of Swifties with her course titled “Taylor Swift and Her World.” However, as the syllabus states, this course is not only meant for die-hard fans of Taylor but also for “the merely Swift-curious…as [well as] people who just want to read poems and stories about celebrities, music, and musicians.”
With a syllabus aimed at exploring “Swift’s own catalog, including hits, deep cuts, outtakes, re-recordings, considering songwriting as its own art, distinct from poems recited or silently read,” Burt expresses a desire to provide students with the tools to spot connections between the mainstream lyricism of Swift and historically significant literary canon, including prose by Willa Cather, James Weldon Johnson, and William Wordsworth.
In reference to the literary movements analyzed in class alongside Swift’s discography, Dominick Lombard ’27 described the larger appeal of an English course that is rooted in both the new and old. “By analyzing these movements and styles, we can discover what makes Swift’s music and brand so appealing to large audiences—tapping into genres and preferences that have helped others propel to stardom…[and] literary movements and techniques [that] don’t die or end but evolve,” he noted.
On a more personal level, Lombard went on to explain that his “why” for taking the course stems from where he grew up. “I am originally from Westerly, Rhode Island, where Taylor Swift has the mansion that inspired her song, The Last Great American Dynasty. You could say Swift-fever took over my town, and since then, I’ve been interested in her music and fame. I have enjoyed examining how literary movements evolve and change even into pop culture and contemporary music,” he said.
However, despite wielding immense economic and social power, Swift’s importance is still questioned by many, especially in higher education. Harvard, and Professor Burt in particular, have received criticism about no longer being taken “seriously” because of a course based on Taylor Swift. In an email interview with the Independent, Burt spoke on this media attention. “Most of the professionals have been sympathetic and lovely; I have turned down a few invitations to appear on right-wing talk shows [since] they shouldn’t be so mean,” she said.
While this course’s subject material may come as a shock to some, Harvard is not unique in its creation of a course based on the global superstar. Colleges around the country, including Arizona State University, University of Florida, University of Texas, NYU, UC Berkeley, and Stanford, have all created courses that offer students the opportunity to examine Swift and her lyricism through different lenses of social psychology, marketing, entrepreneurship, and music theory.
Due to the heightened popularity of Taylor Swift courses in higher education, it should be no surprise that Burt’s course has already received much attention from media and news outlets. In fact, on Monday, February 5th—the day after Swift took home two Grammys and announced her 11th album “The Tortured Poets Department”—NBC was granted exclusive access to film Burt’s lecture. “We have had to tell a lot of TV people that they can’t bring cameras into the classroom [since] Harvard made a deal with NBC,” Burt noted.
These unique media opportunities, although “overwhelming” at times, are something Burt appreciates. “I like attention, and I very much like helping the TFs and TAs, who are brilliant, get attention too,” she said. Similarly, Burt enjoys sharing the spotlight with students. “I love that some students are making TikToks [because] student-created media attention is always better than when professionals from outside Harvard descend.”
Speaking to the dynamic between students, the ten TFs, and herself, Burt noted that “there’s a real sense of performance.” Since “Taylor Swift and Her World” is a new course, Burt has put to use skills she has learned from teaching other new courses. “Sometimes I’ve made mistakes in how to teach them. I think I’ve learned at this point about clarity and organization in a large course and how that’s different, what needs to be done to steer a large course, how it’s not just a seminar writ large,” she commented.
Although Emerson Utgaard ’27 calls the media attention exciting, she remarked that the course itself seems to be “disorganized” because of its size. “It seemed like the teaching team was still figuring things out [and] like the class was 100% catered to Taylor Swift super-fans,” Utgaard explained. “Even though [the class] was advertised as a class for everyone, a casual fan would be completely lost in the sea of sometimes obscure references used by the teaching team.”
Due to its disorganized nature, Utgaard says that she ultimately decided to drop the course after the first week. “I took the class to have joy and balance in my life, to give me Lover or Fearless energy. Instead, it was giving Reputation, and thus: Look What You Made Me Do,” she commented.
As with any new course, these mixed student reviews come with the territory. In other words, as Burt acknowledges, everyone is in a different “era.” While Utgaard is in Reputation, Burt said, “The class is Fearless. I think I, personally, perhaps alas, might be in 1989.”
Ava Rem ’27 (avarem@college.harvard.edu) was not, alas, ready for this class and dropped it.