The huge success of Taylor Swift also leads not only to growing media attention, but also to the interest of cultural institutions.
When an artist achieves great success and becomes not only an artistic, but also a cultural landmark, the first to realize this, as a rule, are the guardians of the spread of culture. Especially universities.
It is in this sense that the so-called honorary degrees reasons that recognize the cultural merit of artists who often do not even realize how much they managed to influence the younger generation, almost always in an extremely positive way.
Taylor Swift, psychology course based on her songs
For Taylor Swifthowever, in an absolutely record season, coinciding with what will become biggest world tour for fees and the number of spectators involved, an exception had to be made.
Hand in hand with the general opinion that Taylor Swift has become the biggest music superstar on the planet, in fact, there is a new course coming from Arizona State University that treats her as a subject of study and deep analysis.
The topic is really very interesting, starting with the title of the training course: The Psychology of Taylor Swift. The course is taught by a PhD graduate: apparently a very young student, a great lover of the lyrics and compositions of the American singer-songwriter, who successfully offered the director and the rector a course designed to make news absolutely unique in its kind.
Speaker and curator of the course, which will be borrowed from the Faculty of Psychosocial Studies Arizona Universitycalled Alexandra Wormley: “The course mainly uses Taylor Swift as a semester-long example of various character phenomena. Gossip, relationships, but also feelings of revenge and revenge” writes the ACS website, following the words of the speaker.
Songs as a form of revenge
Taylor Swift wrote several songs about the sudden end of a relationship (Hey Steven, Picture for the record, It’s all too good) others who are born with difficulties associated, perhaps, with the imposition of a family (Love story). Many of these songs were very often used by social media against the singer-songwriter as if they were a distorting model for new generations.
But Dr. Wormley quotes one of the singer’s most important songs, Reputation 2017 just as a key example of what the course values will be: “The lesson is not a seminar about what we like or dislike, but a tool for understanding how pop songs can be a tool to help us understand what their impact is on a psychosocial level. In this sense, Taylor’s sixth album Reputation is an extremely telling example. The album is a tool that explains how the singer had to defend herself against some of the social conflicts with hugely influential figures on the Internet, such as Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Some of the songs have a real revenge strategy that goes far beyond the artistic value of the songs, because it has a huge impact through the media and social networks.”
Hence the teaching of the course: “Students will need to understand what the value of revenge is, why we commit it, and what are the more sophisticated tools that make us vindictively refute people’s opinions. This is a very valuable study.”
Universities study Taylor Swift
In truth, the one Arizona State University this is not the first educational initiative to feature the name of Taylor Swift, who has been the object of study and research on several occasions, especially in the United States, but not only. All this in perfect harmony with the growing attention to his business and his huge commercial success.
February 2022 Clive Davis Recording Institute New York University has launched its first superstar course taught by Rolling Stone reporter Brittany Spanos. last augustUniversity of Texas Austin launched a new liberal arts class called Literary Competitions and Contexts – Taylor Swift Songbookin which the work of the singer-songwriter was studied along with such works as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wyatt, Coleridge, Keats, Dickinson and Plath with “mandatory texts” including four of his latest albums.
Most recently very prestigious Stanford University, California one of the leading university institutions in the world has announced a winter course called Everything is too good (10 week version), which – in a very bizarre way – also mimics the new Taylor Swift reissue titles. Over 10 weeks of classes, the course illustrates an in-depth analysis of the emotional lyrics of the No. 1 singer’s hit, explained through the interpretations of Nona Hungate, a physician specializing in creative, social, and literary communication.