Harvard now teaches a Taylor Swift course…

Vapid and erosion of higher education

So, when it's time to get a job... I graduated on Taylor Swift?

Taught by a tranny no less. I busted out laughing when I saw that segment on TMZ today.

Unreal.

This makes "Introduction to Basket-Weaving" looks like quantum physics.

You need to calm down!

And people wonder why the humanities are dying.

R6, it's an elective. If you don't like it, don't take it.

I'm guessing you majored in creationist studies at Bob Jones

I refuse to believe this.

Harvard and Yale grad. Seems to be a real professor. And so cute!

LMFAO R9, is that for real?

Eh, colleges were teaching courses on Madonna when I was in school in the 90s.

She’s following in the steps of Queen Bey I see.

This explains a lot.

R11 please share some proof of this

Of course there were courses on Madonna.

R15 saying of course doesn’t provide proof of the claim. I was around back then and never met anyone who had a Madonna course. Show the proof.

Why are you watching TMZ though? Gross.

I'm sure students write papers on the Kardashians, as well. R16 Tell us more about life as troglodyte. You really have no idea what goes on in critical studies.

I dunno about courses, but I had some good friends in Ph. D. programs in English Lit back in the 90s and they worshiped Vadge. Talked a lot more about her than about Edith Wharton or Virginia Woolf.

R18 writing a paper on someone isn’t the same as there being a course on someone.

Well, it's better than a Kanye Kardashian curse!

Republicans want our tax dollars to pay for private religious schools that teach creationism and ban LGBT kids

Fuck off, Republicans. We all know you're mad because you couldn't get into Harvard.

In 2018 I taught a university course on Intersectionality and Digital Business Models and most of the students did research about influencers.

R20 would you kindly just shut your stupid mouth? Sheesh, you're so proud to be a colossal dumbass. You clearly attended shit schools or had blinders on, in the 90s.

Here ya go, r14. You could have just googled it before making an ass of yourself.

R24 cool. Still not a COURSE.

R25 you just exposed yourself as someone who is uneducated. No college. Do you know what a semester course is?

My god, the troll in this thread.

R28 what is a semester course???

Did you read y link to Wikipedia, r27?

[quote] Major American universities dedicated classes to the singer across the nation,[26][30] mostly in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s.[46][39] In this regard, Frenchman scholar Georges-Claude Guilbert wrote in the book Madonna as Postmodern Myth (2002), Princeton, Harvard, UCLA, the University of Colorado and Rutgers were the first to propose courses "about" Madonna.[41] Liberal art colleges, such as 7 sisters also taught courses that examined Madonna's cultural influence.

Stop responding. This troll is being deliberately obstinate.

R30 proposed? Did they go into affect?

I had one too!

I was finished with college by the 90's but I remember news coverage of Madge courses being taught in several colleges including my alma mater and the controversy this raised. I'm sure when I was a child they had courses on the Beatles that people flipped out over too. Now they're revered elder statesmen and courses on their music and legacy are commonplace.

Wake up "this isn't true!" guy and stop being such a pedestrian stooge. You obviously know nothing.

(hint: They have MJ classes too.)

R16 Because this trend really started with Queen Bey who is the most influential female performer of all time. I think Columbia University circa 2011.

[quote]Queen Bey who is the most influential female performer of all time

What a shallow view of cultural history.

This is revolting

Also Teacake is a braiNwashed cunt

R35, Gaga's course at USC course was 2011 too.

I guarantee you that he-she at R9 considers themself to be a lesbian.

behold the pulchritude

r40 I think she has a wife/female partner

So, if she's teaching all of Taylor Swift's relationships, I wonder whether she covers Karlie Kloss et al, and if so whether the publicists are suing? I mean, you're basically just teaching a course that's a pseudo fraus' magazine, aren't you?

I think she used to be he.

All you fucking complaining morons either never went to college or have brain worms rotting your memory...

Universities of all kinds have ALWAYS had frivolous-seeming ELECTIVE courses - usually centered around something pop culture related... sometimes even the courses are really about something more complex.

Most of them are limited to a few semesters before changing it up for something else silly-seeming.

[bold]This kind of stuff is NOTHING NEW.[/bold]

Wtf is wrong with you people? You're so grumpy and pre-triggered to be mad at kids-these-days you completely lose all memory and self-reference. Get a grip.

I have a doctorate in a humanities field, r45, and I have many things to say about this. My thoughts mostly involve the state of the humanities and the decline in rigor associated with earning a humanities degree (undergrad).

I'm not sure what R45 means by "always". I imagine it means the usual "since I was born" common among the young.

I was studying and then teaching in universities into the early 1990s and I never saw any pop culture electives offered, not even to the scientists who were encouraged to do one humanities subject in an effort to make them more rounded people. Nor did anyone write in that bizarre invented language humanities academics use now, which makes every thought impenetrable even if the author does know what he or she is talking about. In the olden days, it was taken as a token that you really understood your subject matter if you could explain your views simply and clearly.

[quote] I wonder whether she covers Karlie Kloss et al,

The course description includes how to think about "white texts, Southern texts, transatlantic texts, and queer subtexts"

Ew! I find it deeply offensive that a university course would dare to teach students "how to think about" things. The background you need to engage with a text as the author may have anticipated is one thing. I can see that students these days might need a lot of historical and philosophical context because they don't seem to get it in high school any more.

But what students think about the text after they engage is surely up to them in the Land of the Free?

Joke school. I went to a liberal arts college in the 90s and they didn't bother to entertain us with pop culture. We were more than capable of thinking about, listening to and discussing Madonna on our own time. I didn't need a class to help me see "songwriting as its own art". Gee wow, songwriting is an artform?

There's enough to talk and write about. I'm sure there's a few thiings to be gleaned by thinking about Taylor alongside "Willa Cather, James Weldon Johnson, Tracey Thorn, and William Wordsworth". Maybe you leave Harvard knowing how mid Taylor is compared to the best of Everything But the Girl.

"She" still is a he, r44.

Does anyone still teach "Madonna courses" at university? If not, that just goes to show how superficial and facile they were, simple attempts by ivory tower academics to show how culturally relevant they were. Same with this silly course on Taylor Swift, whose organiser is only employed as a "diversity" hire.

At least the Madonna courses were supposedly about understanding and interpreting popular culture. The Taylor Swift course is titled "Taylor Swift and Her World".

Now we're supposed to believe that this man is a "mother".

[quote]Outside of the Barker Center, Burt takes great joy in being a mother to her two children, as well as engaging with the greater Boston community.

Of all the insane shit trannies spout, stuff like that annoys me the most, r54. This person, like most of them with children, FATHERED their kids before their transitions. (Assuming they're real kids and not animals or dolls or imaginary - you never know with this type.) Fine, you have kids, you're a parent, but you ARE NOT A MOTHER. Those kids presumably have a mother already. If you adopt a kid after you transition, then you're a mother (well not really, but at least you can make a case).

Seriously, do you tell your kids to stop calling you "Dad" and start calling you "Mom", or "Mom 2", or something? As messed up as Caitlyn is, as far as I know "her" kids still say "Dad."

The real problem is it's an English course. Swift is not a great lyricist though I see her fans get a lot of milage out of parsing the vaguery of her songs. A better avenue of study would be a broader approach looking at 1. Her feminism, girl power. What does it mean if anything. 2. Swift as image maker. Her fans calling the albums different eras, etc. 3. Swift as business person. Is she a business? 4. Is Swift an independent artist? What do we make of her refusing Spotify initially, rerecording her albums, etc. Related themes. 5. Swift as consensus. Is Swift more or less than a rallying point for an age of fractured popular media?

Am I throwng out paper topics?

r56 the number of English majors has been falling for decades. At my university, the solution has been to cut requirements for the degree (eg, period requirements, a foreign language requirement, etc). It is entirely feasible that a graduate from our program can walk out the door with a BA in English literature without ever having read a word of Chaucer or Milton.

At the same time, the department tries to drum up interest by making English "relevant" to potential majors with pop culture classes such as this one.

I'm not sure how much Harvard has been hit by a dearth of English majors, though.

What's that they say about a fool and his money?

It should not be an "English course", it should be political economy or business or a social science. And Swift should be studied and parsed as a media commodity. That is where she has substance and impact on society. That would be a way in for all the things Harvard wants in the academic offer: gender, race, and all kinds of intersectionality. It could also refer students to scholarship on internet and media as relates to cognitive development, and psychosocial well-being. If a student wanted to take an art criticism or poetry criticism way in, fine, but I think the vast majority of Ivy League students will be interested in the media, entertainment, and economic contexts of Miss Swift.

Meh - nothing new, during my undergrad one of my TA's taught a Beyonce course

The Gray Lady has picked this story up:

the pulchritude!

She looks insufferable.

R16 Proof:

I can't imagine this prof is the toast of the campus. It must ensnare all the misfits, and I thought Harvard rejected misfits as much as possible. It's not a particularly arty school.

I was an avowed hater of Taylor Swift, but I have done a complete 180. She’s a juggernaut. Midnites is a decent album, and she reveals a little more about herself as she matures. She is light years more intelligent than Madonna and Gaga. If she had gone to college, she would absolutely have gone to Smith or Bryn Mawr. Poss Vassar.

Tailor does died died

Oh, dear r69

It has a Wikipedia page.

Before.

Stephen Burt.

He’s a fetishist freak.

Stephanie Burt (also known as Steph and Stephen), a Jewish professor of English at Harvard, is one of the first out transgender people to serve on the faculty of the prestigious university. She discussed her transition on Facebook in June, and we have adapted it here for a wider reading public.

Hi everyone! As many of you know, but some of you don’t, after several years of presenting myself as a lady some of the time, and as a guy at other times, I am now a lady all the time.

Yes, r74. Burt is a heterosexual male in a heterosexual marriage with a woman, yet we are supposed to welcome him into our "community", the so-called "LGBT community".

So gross but good to associated with Trailor because this and killing Brazilians will finally Cancel her ❤️

exhausting

What's with the "lady" crap?

Note to Stephanie: Actual women stopped being "ladies" in the 1980s at the latest.

I'm no lady.

[bold]Here's a course centered on Elvis from 1992 - University of Iowa[/bold]

While Elvis is the center of the course, he also serves as a "gateway" for students to learn much more about Americana.

[quote]"It's like Elvis is a book and you open Elvis and you find Little Richard, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole . . . and I'm going to show this

[quote] Does anyone still teach "Madonna courses" at university?

Yes. It falls under Geriatric Studies.

It's super weird how some here went right to focusing on the Prof of this course being trans

Fucking obsessed.

Look, just jack off to trans porn and accept your fetish. Consensual fetishes are FINE Going thru the whole rigamarole of getting "triggered" by trans people openly existing in the world has got to be exhausting. You have a fetish, accept it. Your life will be much less stressful if you just come to terms with the fact that you have "a thing" for trans people. No big deal.

Or, wait?? Do you need to be upset or disgusted to get a boner? Yeesh. Yeah, if that's the case, perhaps seek a therapist for that. That's deeper than a mere fetish.

Oh fuck off, r82. He's a creepy, cross-dressing heterosexual male fetishist. He's the one who gets a boner from forcing people to call him a "lady".

trans is SO edgy

Given how much people, especially Dataloungers, obsess over celebrities, it's not that surprising. I don't like most celebrity talk but it's so common that studying it academically must be a natural offshoot. Hell, I'm reading a book right now which talks about how academia was pretty much mostly theology in the Middle Ages and that doesn't make much sense to me but it was what people then were preoccupied with.