Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Beyoncé, And Others Have College Courses Named After Them

Wouldn’t it be much easier to concentrate in class if the topic was your favourite pop star? Consider taking notes on Taylor Swift lyrics instead of calculus, reviewing flash cards on Kanye West’s influence on pop culture instead of biology, or quizzing yourself on Miley Cyrus’ fashion statements instead of geography.

That is exactly what a few lucky students at universities all over the world get to do. As a small number of artists from the last decade or two have progressed from pop stars to pop icons, an increasing number of academic institutions have begun to offer courses devoted to their songwriting abilities, cultural significance, and everything in between.
It may not come as a surprise to see classes on already-certified legends, such as Bob Dylan or The Beatles, listed among a college’s offerings. However, musicians who are still actively producing mainstream hits, such as Harry Styles, Drake, and Lana Del Rey, are beginning to join them in the canon of artists whose careers are considered profound enough to dissect and analyse in a scholarly setting.

Swift, for example, sparked a trend of college courses built around her in 2022. Indeed, one offered at the University of Texas promised to compare her songbook to the works of famous poets like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats, and Dickinson. Meanwhile, a surge in Beyoncé-themed classes began in 2016, with professors from Rutgers, Arizona State, and other universities looking to Queen Bey to contextualise academic literature on Black feminist studies.
So, grab a pen and paper and prepare to take notes on the study of contemporary musicians. Here are ten college courses for pop stars:

Georgia State University offered a Kanye West course in 2015, followed by another at Washington University in St. Louis in 2017. Five years later, Concordia University in Montreal introduced Ye research to Canada with a course called “Kanye vs Ye: Genius by Design.”
In an Instagram post, rapper and professor Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman, who taught the course, said, “An opportunity to bring more amazing guests to the University and to discuss the world through the lens of one of the most influential artists of our generation.” “This isn’t just about Kanye. It’s about community, creativity, responsibility, accountability, celebrity and mental health, dreams and nightmares, and, most importantly, self-actualization.”

There have been so many college courses dedicated to Beyoncé over the years that adding them all up would require a calculator.
The release of Beyoncé’s critically acclaimed album Lemonade in 2016 appeared to mark a watershed moment in how academics viewed the 28-time Grammy winner. Dr. Rachel Fedock taught a course at Arizona State University in the fall of that year that compared Bey’s work to that of scholars such as Gloria Jean Watkins (aka bell hooks). Erik Steinskog taught a course titled “Beyoncé, Gender, and Race” at the University of Copenhagen the following year.
Queen Bey-related classes have also been taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio and California Polytechnic State University. Kinitra Brooks, who led a Lemonade seminar at UT, later received a grant from the University of Michigan to create a reader/syllabus of her teachings.
In 2017, Brooks told Billboard, “It’s a very southern Black woman tale using folklore in horror and conjuring.” “With Lemonade, Beyoncé walked into a conversation that has been going on within Black women’s networks for 150 years.”

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