A Taylor Swift English class will be offered at UT Austin this fall

The course is provided to undergraduate students in UT’s Liberal Arts Honors program

(Evan Agostini, 2021 Invision)

This fall, students at the University of Texas at Austin will have the opportunity to take an academic course studying Taylor Swift’s written lyrics.

The course, ‘Literary Contests and Contexts — The Taylor Swift Songbook,’ will be rendered to undergraduate students in UT’s Liberal Arts Honors program and taught by Professor Elizabeth Scala.

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The class will be an “introduction to literary studies and research methods” that uses Swift’s songwriting as a foundation, according to the UT English Department’s Facebook post.

“I want to take what Swift fans can already do at a sophisticated level, tease it out for them a bit with a different vocabulary, and then show them how, in fact, Swift draws on richer literary traditions in her songwriting, both topically but also formally in terms of how she uses references, metaphors, and clever manipulations of words,” Scala told KXAN.

Other opportunities for students to take a course that includes well-known singers include the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Selena course and Texas State University’s Harry Styles class.

Also on KSAT:

Selena course returns to UTSA for summer semester and anyone can audit the class


About the Author:

Emily Ramirez is a Digital Producer trainee for KSAT 12. She has written and photographed for several magazines and newspapers, including San Antonio Magazine, Austin Monthly and the San Antonio Current. A proud San Antonio native and graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, she is now completing her M.A. at UTSA.