Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Beyoncé & More: 10 Pop Stars With School Classes Devoted to Them

Contemporary York College’s Clive Davis Institute launched a Lana Del Rey course for the 2022 tumble semester, aimed at inspecting the alt-pop massive establish’s relationship to feminism and connection to social justice actions.

 “Over the course of eight severely acclaimed albums, the six-time Grammy nominated artist has launched a unhappy core, melancholic, and baroque model of dream pop that in flip helped shift and reinvent the sound (and mood) of mainstream song beyond the 2010s,” be taught a top level view of the course, officially titled “Matters in Recorded Tune: Lana Del Rey.” “Thru her exciting visuals and her thematic attention to psychological health and tales of toxic, broken take care of, Del Rey supplied a new platform for artists of all genders to compose ‘anti-pop’ works of substance that will perchance reside in a mainstream as soon as labeled as bubblegum.”

A course on Kanye West became as soon as equipped by Georgia Advise College in 2015, followed by another in 2017 at Washington College in St. Louis. Then 5 years later, Concordia College in Montreal introduced the watch of Ye to Canada with a course referred to as “Kanye vs Ye: Genius by Make.”

“A probability to elevate extra incredible traffic to the College and to discuss the enviornment thru the lens of 1 of basically the most influential artists of our technology,” acknowledged rapper and professor Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman, who taught the course, in an Instagram submit. “This class isn’t handiest about Kanye. It’s about community , creativity, accountability, accountability, fame and psychological health, dreams and and nightmares – and extra importantly, self-actualisation.”

Contemporary York’s Skidmore School debuted a sociology course on Miley Cyrus in 2014, titled “The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Bustle, Class, Gender and Media.”

“Sadly, the system we discuss female pop stars and female our bodies, class matters, gender matters, sexuality and sexual performance matters, but coast matters plenty [too] and the system we discuss white pop stars is rather assorted than how we discuss the our bodies of females of color,” acknowledged the course’s teacher, Professor Carolyn Chernoff. “[Cyrus] complicates representations of the female physique in popular culture in plenty of how which might well well perchance well be loyal, noxious, and gruesome.”

Two of the excellent Toronto-born artists had a university class dedicated to them in — bet the set? Yup, Toronto. Canada’s X College (aka Ryerson College) launched a course titled “Deconstructing Drake and The Weeknd” within the autumn of 2021, aimed at dissecting the Canadian song scene’s representation and infrastructure complications that had both artists work on their careers within the U.S. rather than their house nation.

“It’s time to glean our Canadian rap & R&B icons identified & canonized academically or in any other case,” wrote the course’s professor, Dalton Higgins, on Instagram. “And it is some distance CRITICAL for scholars, historians, to note the Toronto song scene that birthed Drake/Weeknd and helped compose the must haves for them to alter into mega worthwhile.”

There were so many college lessons dedicated to Beyoncé over the years, you’ll want a calculator so that you just can add all of them up.

The launch of Bey’s acclaimed album Lemonade in 2016 seemed as if it might well most likely perchance well mark a turning level in how scholars regarded the 28-time Grammy winner. In tumble of that yr, Dr. Rachel Fedock taught a course at Arizona Advise College that when in contrast Bey’s work to that of students such as Gloria Jean Watkins (aka bell hooks). The yr after, Erik Steinskog taught a course titled “Beyoncé, Gender and Bustle” at the College of Copenhagen.

Other lessons about Queen Bey were taught at the College of Texas at San Antonio and at California Polytechnic Advise College. Kinitra Brooks, who led a seminar on Lemonade at UT, went on to assemble a grant from the College of Michigan to compose a reader/syllabus of her teachings.

“It’s a in actuality southern Unlit lady sage the employ of folklore in fright and conjuring,” Brooks told Billboard in 2017. “With Lemonade, Beyoncé walked into a conversation that’s been occurring for 150 years within Unlit females’s networks.”

Rihanna represented one half of the self-discipline self-discipline cloth in a class taught at College of Texas Austin referred to as “Beyoncé Feminism, Rihanna Womanism.” Led by partner professor Dr. Omise’eke Tinsley, the course analyzed how both icons checklist help to Unlit feminist principles.

“The gorgeous ingredient about Beyoncé and Rihanna is that entirely about a people don’t beget any feelings about them,” Tinsley told Texas Usual about the course. “Other folks beget worthy feelings about them, some certain some adversarial. Right here’s also a course that students are going to beget worthy opinions. To search out a way for them in a expansive faculty room to be ready inform these opinions, I feel goes to involve some creativity. And perchance things take care of doing a chunk dance moves, moral, to enable some room for expression for certain.”

In gentle of Britney Spears’ high-profile loyal conservatorship case in 2021, William Paterson College in Contemporary Jersey launched a web course aptly titled “#FreeBritney.” The employ of the “Toxic” singer’s relate as a culturally relevant core instance, the class became as soon as designed to uncover disability rights as they pertain to the finest machine.

“I’m in actuality thinking about this class,” acknowledged professor Pamela Brillante in a submit on the college’s set of living. “Guardianship/conservatorship is a disability rights relate. It’s all about who has autonomy and who will get to invent their very include choices, on sage of as adults, we’re allowed to invent melancholy choices.”

Swifties at Contemporary York College received the probability in spring 2022 to analyze Taylor Swift‘s development as a inventive song entrepreneur, her pop and nation songwriting influences, how discourses of childhood and girlhood are exploited within the media and song alternate, and the politics of coast in up-to-the-minute standard song in another Clive Davis Institute course taught by Rolling Stone team author Brittany Spanos.

At the cease of that connected semester, NYU presented the pop massive establish with an honorary doctorate in dazzling arts at the the 2022 graduation ceremony and invited her to stutter that yr’s commencement speech.

The very next semester, a course opened at the College of Texas that frail Swift’s songbook as a way of introducing literary serious reading and research techniques. “Specializing in Swift’s song and the cultural contexts wherein it and her profession might well perchance well be found, we’ll factor in frameworks for determining her work, such as poetic develop, model, and historical past among varied matters and theoretical disorders principal to contextualization as we note cease and in-depth reading, evaluating secondary sources, and constructing worthy arguments,” be taught the course description.

In August 2023, Arizona Advise College launched a course referred to as Psychology of Taylor Swift — Developed Matters of Social Psychology, which is ready to be taught by PhD pupil Alexandra Wormley. “The course is in actuality the employ of Taylor Swift as a semester-long instance of varied phenomena — gossip, relationships, revenge,” she told ASU’s recordsdata set of living, emphasizing that “the class is never any longer a seminar on how powerful we take care of or despise her — we prefer with a view to be taught about psychology.”