Why Taylor Swift belongs on English literature degree courses
When I started my podcast, Studies in Taylor Swift, in the spring of 2021, I felt that I was simultaneously helping to invent, and trying to catch up to, the academic discipline of Taylor Swift studies.
- When I started my podcast, Studies in Taylor Swift, in the spring of 2021, I felt that I was simultaneously helping to invent, and trying to catch up to, the academic discipline of Taylor Swift studies.
- I went on to design a summer school course at Queen Mary University of London on Taylor Swift and Literature in 2023.
Dear reader
- We talked about the line “You drew stars around my scars / But now I’m bleedin’”.
- The idea was to try to figure out how the “but” worked – whether the scars had reopened or new ones had been created.
- It is also a song about the speaker herself, someone who keeps getting “marooned” on the shores of the past.
Hits different
- On the other hand, there is clearly something about the idea of classes on Taylor Swift as literature that catches the popular imagination.
- In media discussions, her name is sometimes juxtaposed with another one: Shakespeare.
- The Times published Bate’s article alongside a quiz asking readers whether Swift or Shakespeare had written a particular line.
- But this is born from a popular misconception about what it is we do in literature classes – even Shakespeare classes.
Clio Doyle teaches a class on Taylor Swift and Literature at the Queen Mary Summer School.