University of Texas offers Taylor Swift songwriting course this fall

Taylor Swift’s songwriting is to be the subject of a new literature class at a college in Lone Star State.

The University of Texas at Austin is now offering students a songwriting course that focuses on the 11-Grammy Award winner’s approach to creating lyrics.

Dubbed “Literary Contests and Contexts: The Taylor Swift Songbook,” English teacher Dr. Elizabeth Scala will teach the course starting this fall.

Swift’s songs will now be read aloud alongside the works of literary giants such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Frost and Keats, according to the university’s website.

« Let’s turn this Easter egg hunt and detailed reading for academic purposes, » the university’s English department wrote in a Facebook post in May.

« Swift is a smart, talented songwriter, and her songwriting skills are what made me focus on her, » Scala told the Austin American-Statesman.

She said her daughter introduced her to Swift’s music in November, shortly after « Red (Taylor’s Version) » was released.

« I want to take what Swift fans can already do on a sophisticated level, tease it a bit with different vocabulary, and then show them how, in fact, Swift draws from richer literary traditions in her writing, » said said Scala. .

“I will show the students that these operations and interpretative gestures that one makes while reading one’s songs are suitable for all forms of writing.

The course will use « pop music icon Taylor Swift’s songwriting to introduce literary critical reading and research methods – foundational skills for work in English literature and other humanities disciplines » , says the university’s website.

« By focusing on Swift’s music and the cultural contexts in which she and her career are situated, we will examine frameworks for understanding her work, such as poetic form, style, and history among a variety of important theoretical issues and questions. for contextualization as we practice up-close and in-depth reading, evaluating secondary sources, and building strong arguments,” the source description adds.

Preliminary course texts include the Red (Taylor’s Version), Lover, Folklore, and Evermore albums.

New York University was the first to create a course in Swift’s honor, however, their course covers the singer as a musical entrepreneur and focuses on the songwriters who shaped her work.

Earlier this year, Swift received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from NYU.