How You Can Get Schooled on Taylor Swift in the US and Abroad

This fall you’ll be able to get schooled on Taylor Swift in the US and abroad.

As previously reported, Ghent University in Belgium is offering an elective course focusing on Taylor Swift’s lyrics called Literature: Taylor's Version. British professor Elly McCausland will lead the course.

Not to be outdone, Arizona State University is offering its own Swift-related studies this fall with a course called Psychology of Taylor Swift – Advance Topics of Social Psychology. It will also examine Swift’s lyrics, through the lens of social psychology.

That course’s instructor, Alexandra Wormley, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology, hopes that tapping into Swift’s lyrics "will spark meaningful conversations and serve as a teaching tool for learning advanced psychology concepts,” she told the ASU News.

Though the course will obviously appeal to the Swift faithful, you don’t necessarily need to be a fan to get something out of the class. Wormley said, “The class is not a seminar on how much we like or dislike her — we want to be able to learn about psychology.”

"To be clear, this course will not focus on an analysis of Taylor herself,” Wormley wrote on the ASU website. “Instead, we will learn about advanced topics in social psychology that feature in her work, her life, and her fans, including romantic relationships, fiction/escapism, revenge, and social development."

Given Swift’s enormous popularity at the moment, the course is likely to strike a chord with students, and that’s exactly what Wormley is hoping. “Research has shown time and time again that when students can relate their course material to their own lives, it increases comprehension and retention,” she told the ASU News. “As educators, we should be taking advantage of this little quirk in our brains to foster learning.”

This continues the trend of using prominent pop music figures as the subjects of college courses. For example, Harvard University offers a class on the lyrics of Bob Dylan, a 2016 Nobel Prize winner for Literature.