From Taylor Swift to Bob Dylan, pop music has found a place on the syllabus

In 2021, as a 150-strong class of undergraduate English majors settled down for their first lecture in “Foundations of English Literature” at Clark’s College, University of Oregon, in the US, they were hit by a loud riff of metallic guitars. The professor had pressed play on “Wig Wam Bam”, a cult classic from 1970s hit US Disco band The Sweets. As it turned out, the syllabi for “Foundations of English Literature” — a series of three term-length courses — had packed in a galaxy of music stars like Bob Dylan, The Queens, and others, and their famous creations, as academic texts to be read and analysed by the students.

This was not the first time that university-level literature courses had included pop music texts as part of their syllabi. In fact, close to 15 major US universities, including the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and UC Berkley, were offering literature lectures in the academic year 2021-22. Bob Dylan, the winner of the 2016 Nobel in literature, featured in most of these courses.  

And now, Taylor Swift will soon join the hallowed collection of music stars whose works have been taught as literature. The Ghent University in Belgium proposes to introduce a new course titled ‘Literature: Taylor’s Version’, which will be open to all master’s students and is scheduled to commence in the upcoming autumn semester. Elly McCausland, an assistant professor at the University has crafted a syllabus that will include Swift’s work along with traditional literary rockstars such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Charlotte Brontë, and William Shakespeare.

While it may not be surprising to see classes on established music legends such as Bob Dylan or The Beatles, colleges around the world have also begun to include contemporary musicians such as Swift, Harry Styles, Drake, and Lana Del Rey, who are still active in the mainstream music industry.

Swift has had several American Universities offering courses focused on her music and lyrics in between 2020 and 2022. In the years 2016 and 2017, several Beyoncé-themed classes were on offer at Rutgers University, Arizona State, and others, which used the Black music legend’s compositions to contextualize Black feminist literature and cultural texts.

Queen Bey’s texts often find themselves pared in a comparative study with those of another Black woman pop sensation Rihanna. The latter represented one-half of the subject matter in a class taught at the University of Texas Austin called “Beyoncé Feminism, Rihanna Womanism.” Led by associate professor Dr. Omise’eke Tinsley, the course analysed how both icons relate back to Black feminist principles.

In fact, Black literary and cultural studies have repeatedly invited songwriters and music producers including Bob Marley, Gill Scott Heron, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and the Weekend, to offer comparative analysis to the works of literary stalwarts like James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Closer home, while most prominent universities have shied away from formally including musicians and lyricists in literature syllabi, more and more university professors have started to introduce their works as comparative texts for understanding contemporary women’s and even Dalit issues. A Delhi University professor, who did not wish to be named, told Business Standard, “When teaching about Dalit literature, especially Dalit women, it is a crime to not reference the work of young and upcoming artists like Punjabi singer Ginni Mahi or Marathi activist and singer Sheetal Sathe. That the University will give space to such singers and voices in their syllabi, is still a farfetched reality. And traditional mainstream Indian film music too offers only the rarest of examples of such voices. Introducing them in our lectures is the least we can do,” says the professor.

Read the Rhythm

“Topics in Recorded Music: Lana Del Rey”, New York University’s Clive Davis Institute, Fall 2022.

“Kanye vs Ye: Genius by Design”, Concordia University in Montreal, Fall 2022.

“Deconstructing Drake and The Weeknd”, Canada’s X University (aka Ryerson University), Fall 2021.

“Beyoncé, Gender and Race”, University of Copenhagen, 2016

“The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender and Media”, New York’s Skidmore College, 2014.

“Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame”, The University of South Carolina, Spring 2011.