Taylor Swift is the subject of a new university course
Taylor Swift has become the subject of a new university course in Arizona.
The course, entitled the Psychology of Taylor Swift – Advanced Topics of Social Psychology, aims to analyse what psychologists can learn from her career.
PhD student Alexandra Wormley, who is teaching the course told Arizona State University‘s news site: “The course is basically using Taylor Swift as a semester-long example of different phenomena – gossip, relationships, revenge,” emphasising that “the class is not a seminar on how much we like or dislike her – we want to be able to learn about psychology.”
She added that she will be connecting themes from Swift’s various albums to psychology, giving 2017’s ‘Reputation’ as an example.
“Taylor’s sixth album, ‘Reputation’, is her comeback after disappearing from the spotlight due to conflicts with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. She enacts her revenge on them – and the broader media landscape – by dropping an incredibly successful album along with a stadium tour,” she said.
“The students know this – but do they know why we like revenge? Do they know how we enact revenge? Social psychology can tell us.”
It comes after a university class dissecting Swift’s ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version)’ was announced at Stanford University earlier this year.
The course, titled All Too Well (10 Week Version), will be available at Stanford University during its upcoming winter quarter. The course will see “an in-depth analysis” of the singer-songwriter’s hit song, led by Stanford University alum Nona Hungate. Find out more about the course here.
In February 2022, New York University’s Clive Davis Institute also launched a course that covered “Swift’s evolution as a creative music entrepreneur, the legacy of pop and country songwriters, discourses of youth and girlhood, and the politics of race in contemporary popular music”.
The following August, the University of Texas kicked off a course titled The Taylor Swift Songbook, which used “the songwriting of pop music icon Taylor Swift to introduce literary critical reading and research methods-basic skills for work in English literature and other humanities disciplines.”
Meanwhile, Swift‘s fifth album ‘1989’ recently saw a spike in streams following the announcement of the upcoming re-recorded edition.
The pop star confirmed last week that ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ will arrive on October 27, 2023, which is the ninth anniversary of the original 2014 LP. You can pre-order/pre-save it here.
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Damian Jones
NME
