Students take on Taylor’s version of classic texts in cultural studies course

Northwest Missouri State University students applied a pop twist to a literature course last fall and gained new perspectives of classics – old and new. 

The course, Cultural Studies in Literature (Taylor's version), took 17 students on a journey with Associate Professor of English Dr. Ashley Black that used Taylor Swift’s music catalog as an entry point to consider ways the performer impacts cultural discourses.

The class began by studying Swift as a lyricist and how her songwriting draws on narrative storytelling as well as confessional writing with similarities to female poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Black and the students also explored feminine archetypes, their connections to mythology and the influences of canonical literature in Swift’s songs.

They delved into themes of mental health and the ways society judges women exhibiting anger. While a favorite class reading was “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, students also read “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams and watched the film “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” which connects with Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department.” The course concluded with a study of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” a novel Swift referenced in songs appearing on her “Reputation” album. 

While courses related to Taylor Swift have sprung up at college campuses across the country in recent years – with focal points on topics such as songwriting, marketing and media, and pop culture studies – Black began contemplating her course after attending The Eras Tour during its Kansas City stop in 2023.

“I went with a group of girlfriends, and it was just something like I hadn’t experienced before,” she said. “Just the sense of community and the joy.”

Black thought she could apply Swift’s songwriting to the special topics course she teaches every other fall about cultural studies and literature.

As reading assignments and class discussions drove the course, Black created a tracklist for each unit with a selection of songs from each of Swift’s albums. For their part, students also created reflective pieces for each unit that varied from album covers to rewriting Swift songs from the perspective of a literary character they studied.

“It was really interesting seeing the things that students would create and the ways that they would draw upon not even just her lyrics but looking at – whether it was things from The Eras Tour or her other album artwork – how they were able to make those connections and really represent either a thematic idea or the tone or some of the symbolism, how they would take what she was doing and kind of reinvent it,” Black said.

For their final projects in December, Black gave her students the freedom to create presentations based on their course discussions. The results – given in a Colden Hall classroom on the morning after Swift wrapped The Eras Tour – were colorful, animated PowerPoint presentations on topics including Swiftenomics (noting The Eras Tour’s impact on local tourism and downtowns), an exploration of growing up as a girl (that invoked a slew of Swift songs from “Never Grow Up” to “You’re On Your Own Kid”) and Swift’s connection to Romanticism (and the writing of John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge).

The students comprising the course weren’t just English majors. They included students pursuing degrees in psychology, communication and education.

“Before I started teaching it, I was a little nervous. I wasn’t sure what kind of a background the students would have,” Black said. “Would they all be Swifties and they were taking the class? About half of them really were devoted fans and maybe the other half had heard some of her music before but weren’t necessarily coming into it as a huge fan.”

Count Sada Irving, a senior psychology major from Elsberry, Missouri, among the non-English majors who had only a passing understanding of Swift before she enrolled in the course. Irving took the course to fulfill academic requirements as an English minor and called it “a pleasant surprise.”

“After taking this class, I would consider myself a fan and admirer of Taylor Swift,” Irving said. “I’m more of a rhythm and blues, jazz person, but I am a lover of words and that’s what I value most about Taylor’s music. How she can articulate feelings, emotions and heartache so beautifully inspires me as a writer and a person interested in the human condition.”

Irving said she enjoyed reading the literature connected to Swift’s lyrical styles and storytelling while learning about her vast cultural impact and takes on other iconic works.

On Swift’s epic “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” Irving noted, “It’s a whirlwind of storytelling, confession and heartache. It mirrors the kinds of things Sylvia Plath does in ‘The Bell Jar,’ and they both use these tropes that have been labeled unto women since the beginning of time. These pieces are eye-opening and relatable. I think, along with the authors of these classic texts, Taylor Swift will be listed as one of the greats. She’s not only a pop star but a literary legend.”

Irving – who now considers “Folklore” among her favorite albums – titled her final presentation “Catharsis Era” and discussed Swift’s dialogue on mental health issues. She wants to work in the mental health field after graduating from Northwest.

“Swift's music, especially, moved me in the way of understanding how she experiences catharsis, or release while writing and performing, but also how that creates a collective catharsis for millions – if not billions – of people. Catharsis is such a healthy thing to experience and can be done through a number of things but especially through creativity.”

Unlike Irving, Liliana Brancato, a junior English education major from Liberty, Missouri, says she is “100 percent a Swiftie” and attended one of Swift’s Eras performances in Kansas City, calling that experience “a life-changing event.” When she learned from friends that Northwest was offering a course related to Swift, she thought they were playing a joke on her.

Brancato said she, too, enjoyed reading classic works and dissecting Swift’s songwriting, looking for deeper meanings while knocking down perceptions that the pop star only writes about ex-boyfriends and rivals.

Brancato’s final presentation, “Easter Eggs: Taylor’s Version,” discussed the messages Swift plants in her lyrics, music videos and fashion as well as the connections Swift draws to literature ranging from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Peter Pan” to “The Great Gatsby” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

“I love dissecting the things she does when she is very obviously trying to tell us something without outright telling us,” Brancato said. “Plus, I always want to talk about her Easter eggs, so doing it for a grade just made it all better.” 

Can Northwest students expect a second act of the course in the future? Black hasn’t decided.

“It was a really nice space for us as a group to come in, and it was almost cathartic in a way,” Black said. “So I am sad to see it go, but I do hope in the future that I might be able to do another Swift-type course and do it maybe a little bit differently in the future.”