Beginning in January 2025, students can be schooled in the art of Taylor Swift — specifically the singer’s impact on pop culture.
“Icons of Popular Music” will be made available for the first time via the University of Guelph (U of G) in Winter 2025. The OpenEd, online, general course is co-designed by Dr. Alyssa Woods, professor of popular music at the School of Fine Art and Music, and Dr. Robert Edwards, scholar of religion and popular culture.
Although other schools might focus on one aspect of Swift, like her literary legacy or her use of symbolism, this course will dive deep into the variety of ways that popular music and popular culture intersect with art, literature, gender, sexuality, race, religion, politics, feminism, celebrity, fandom, business acumen, the economy and the law — and look at how Swift is an “invisible string” that bridges all these factors together.
“Taylor Swift is not just a singer or a pop star,” Edwards said in a U of G blog post. “Popular music is such a pervasive element of our culture and so really any artist that rises to this level of popularity and success becomes a pervasive element of our culture.”
The 12-week-long four-credit course has a projected class enrollment of 600 and is super accessible to anyone — students can take it regardless of their major; there are no prerequisites required, and it’s open to the public. It’s a distance education course (so entirely online) and asynchronous, meaning students can take the course at their own pace, with no scheduled class times.
According to Woods, the critical thinking and analysis skills that are foundational to the course offer a different way to approach critical engagement, so the course extends to education of any discipline.
“That’s the core,” Woods explained in a blog post. “Taylor Swift is like a case study, or a lens to look at this through. It really speaks to the interdisciplinary nature of popular music studies.”
The course will cover it all — students can expect to dissect Swift’s lyrics while looking for symbolism in her work, explore the singer’s decision to re-record her first six albums so they remain in her ownership, explore the way she brings people of all ages and races together (hello friendship bracelets), and observe how her brand brings millions of dollars to local economies on her tour stops. (Her recent “Eras Tour” shows at the Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto this November contributed to an estimated $282 million in economic impact and over $152 million in direct spending.)
“The fact that we’re seeing this with a female artist is not insignificant,” Woods stated. “She writes her own music and controls a lot of the elements of her identity, her business and her brand. This is a mass cultural impact we are witnessing.”
The course, MUSC*1150, is available as an elective to students of any major through OpenEd.
