When Pop Stars Take Over the Classroom
Back-to-school season is upon us and students all over the country are returning to campus to study the works of world history’s most important figures. While for some people, these figures encompass traditional academic luminaries like Einstein and Shakespeare, for others, they include Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny.
A new crop of college courses has emerged in recent years that center around the lives and careers of today’s biggest pop stars. These range from music classes that dissect the work of Lana Del Rey, to African Studies courses about Beyoncé and Rihanna’s feminism, to sociology courses about how artists like Harry Styles are received and treated by the public.
Brian Donovan, for example, is a cultural sociology professor at Kansas University who has just begun teaching a new course titled The Sociology of Taylor Swift. The class aims to use Swift as a means of understanding concepts ranging from celebrity culture to feminism to notions of authenticity.