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Culture > Entertainment

Yes, Harvard & The University Of Florida Are Offering Courses Dedicated To Taylor Swift In 2024

Karly Ramnani

Imagine a world where you could get straight A’s just for being a dedicated Swiftie! Well, this dream will soon become a reality for Harvard and The University of Florida students. The institutions will be introducing brand new courses dedicated to Taylor Swift’s music catalog, songwriting, and her life experiences. According the schools’ official websites, the courses will officially launch in Spring 2024 and it looks like there’s still time to sign up. As with anything Swift-related these days, there’s a good chance these spots will fill up very fast, so be sure to act swiftly. 

Taught by Stephanie Burt, Harvard’s course will be called “Taylor Swift And Her World.” It will explore Swift’s artistic and lyrical evolution in depth while analyzing her musical and literary precursors. Students will get to examine the way adolescents and young adults view the singer as a role model, as well as the larger umbrella of fandom culture. “We will move through Swift’s own catalogue, including hits, deep cuts, outtakes, re-recordings, considering songwriting as its own art, distinct from poems recited or silently read,” the course description reads. “We will learn how to study fan culture, celebrity culture, adolescence, adulthood and appropriation; how to think about white texts, Southern texts, transatlantic texts, and queer subtexts. We will learn how to think about illicit affairs, and hoaxes, champagne problems and incomplete closure.” 

Several LGBTQ+ fans have expressed how viewing Swift’s music from a queer lens has helped them accept themselves. This group, who refer to themselves as “gaylors,” shared their joy at the inclusion of queer subtexts in the upcoming Harvard course. 

UCF’s course, titled “Musical Storytelling With Taylor Swift And Other Iconic Female Artists,” will take a seminar-focused approach. Offered in “thirteen gorgeous weeks,” the course has similar goals of digging deeper into Swift’s discography. “Each week, students will be expected to keep their eyes open and read closely in order to listen, reflect, discuss, and write on themes like old flames, infidelity, aging, and double standards. Students will collaborate with their peers to annotate lyrics, analyze themes, and participate in class discussions all too well,” the course description reads. 

Since learning of these college courses dedicated to Blondie herself, Swifties have been sharing their reactions on social media and it’s safe to say many are overjoyed!

Harvard and UCF are the two latest schools to add Swift-related courses to their academic canons, with New York University being the first. Months before Swift received her honorary doctorate degree at the school in May 2022, they announced a course studying Swift’s entrepreneurship.  

BRB, transferring to Harvard so I can take a class on Swift. Hey, this is just one more reason to keep those grades up and aim for the Ivy leagues!

Karly Ramnani is a junior at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, studying music industry, with a strong passion for art and journalism. They discovered this amazing community shortly after starting college, and are super stoked to a national writer for Her Campus this semester. Karly worked with Her Campus in Fall 2022 as well, as the Entertainment & Culture Editorial Intern. Other outlets they've written for include All Country News, The Honey Pop, Medium, Newsbreak, and their own startup music blog Playlists & Polaroids. They currently serve as a campus ambassador for Amazon Prime Student and Tinder. When they're not writing blogposts and music reviews, you can find them composing and performing music, putting their nose in a rom-com book, binge watching "The Summer I Turned Pretty," or crying over Taylor Swift.