‘...Ready For It?’ Penn State campus will offer Taylor Swift course this fall
A class that some may have thought was only possible in their “Wildest Dreams” is coming to a Penn State campus this fall — a course on Taylor Swift.
Michele Ramsey, an associate professor of Communication Arts & Sciences and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, will teach “Taylor Swift, Gender, and Communication” at Penn State Berks in Reading, the singersongwriter’s hometown. The class will begin in the fall with space for 100 students, and an online class will be available in the Maymester — a fourweek semester in May and June — open to all students.
Ramsey has always been interested in rhetoric and popular culture. For years she taught a class titled “Rhetoric of American Horror Films,” and it was her first step into teaching a full class about pop culture.
Studying pop culture is important, Ramsey said, because “ideology is most powerful when it’s least visible.” People don’t often think critically about entertainment — even if it influences their behavior or appearance.
“There’s actually a lot of ideology in entertainment. There’s lots of direction on who we’re supposed to like and dislike, and look like and not look like. Think back to your own childhood and who your idols were, and wanting to dress like them and look like them and all of that,” she said. “It’s just one of those places that is really, really prevalent in our lives and even in our identities, and it seems to be one of the places that we are least in the habit of viewing critically.”
The specifics of the class are still being ironed out, but it will focus on gender and communication while helping students think about how art can illuminate issues like gender, sexism, racism and feminism. They’ll also talk about how representations of women are constructed in media, social media campaigns and branding.
People may look at the class and think, “A Taylor Swift class? That’s just fluff,” but Ramsey said that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“It’s how I’m going to teach other really important core skills and knowledge — I’m just going to use Taylor as the vehicle for doing that,” she said. Critical thinking, writing, public speaking, working collaboratively, media and digital literacy, and even event planning will all be part of the class.
And while Swift is the primary case study, Ramsey said, they’ll talk about other people, too.
“We will talk about Beyoncé. We will talk about the double standards of a Black superstar vs. a white superstar and the flak that Beyoncé probably gets that Taylor doesn’t get in certain ways,” Ramsey said.
‘Tell Me Why’ Although Ramsey knew who Swift was, she wasn’t a “Swiftie” until the global superstar’s The Eras Tour began last year. From then on, she saw the criticism and backlash Swift got from people — especially men — who called her fan base cult-ish. It got worse when “The Eras Tour” concert film hit theaters. Seeing so many people dressing up, singing and dancing in theaters “hit a nerve with a certain population,” and it bothered her.
“I got really irritated with that, and for a number of reasons, one of which is men go to sporting events in huge numbers all the time, wearing the same clothes with other men’s names on their backs and painting their faces and cheering and screaming and — why are we judging one and not the other?” Ramsey said.
That was her first step toward wanting to develop and teach this course. Another factor was seeing her friend’s 9-year-old daughter know what “patriarchy” means thanks to Swift — a word Ramsey said she didn’t learn until college.
Most importantly, she wanted to teach it because she wants the class to hear Swift’s lyrics and give her students
a relevant vocabulary. She used Swift’s song, “The Man,” which is about the double standards women face, as an example.
“(If) they’re listening to ‘The Man’ and they say, ‘Yes, that’s happened to me.’ Well, let me give you a vocabulary for that so that when you go out into the workplace, and this happens to you, you have a name for it,” Ramsey said. “I think that’s a really, really important opportunity that her music gives us.”
Plus, Ramsey said she can’t think of a time when women’s stories, or people who identify as women, were the center of pop culture.
“She’s in movies, she’s on television, she’s on the stage, she’s at the football games. I mean, she’s everywhere, and her stories are there too. These are some just incredible moments that she has sort of ushered in for us,” she said.
‘It’s Nice To Have a Friend’
A full class would comprise 100 seats, half of which will be saved for first-year students. A class that large is uncommon for the Berks campus, Ramsey said, as it prides itself on a small teacher-to-student ratio. The average class size is 21 students, according to the campus’ website.
Despite the “Taylor Swift, Gender, and Communication” class being about five times larger than the average Berks class size, Ramsey sees this as an opportunity for connections to blossom.
The class will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she wants to give students time during class once a week to connect with each other and build friendships. Students are very isolated, she said, largely due to missing critical social years during the COVID-19 pandemic. Intentionally giving students space to connect with someone will help and will be especially helpful for first-year students.
As part of her efforts to help classmates become friends she’ll do a bracelet making activity, something that quickly became a staple to The Eras Tour experience and connected fans across the world. Inspired by Swift’s lyrics — “So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it,” in her song, “You’re on Your Own, Kid” — many Swifties made friendship bracelets to trade with others at the concert.
“Bracelet making is doing more than just making bracelets. That is one thing I would like us to do one day in class, is just to let them sit and make a bracelet and talk about … how this stuff is rolling over them this week or whatever it is they want to talk about,” Ramsey said.
Is there any ‘Bad Blood’?
As the class will examine, Swift is no stranger to heavy criticisms. One constant question Ramsey said the course has faced is, “Why Taylor and not Beyoncé?” Her response is that it would be inauthentic for her to teach a class on Beyoncé.
“I don’t listen to a lot of Beyoncé. I think she’s immensely talented. I love the stuff that pops into my ears … but it’s just not something I listen to,” she said. “What I can do, though, is I can make her a part of this course. We can talk about systemic racism. We can talk about systemic sexism. And we can talk about the fact that Beyoncé has to deal with both of those things. Taylor only has to deal with one. So, that stuff will be meshed in there.”
For those who may not think pop culture is important to teach, Ramsey said if she’s right — if ideology is most powerful where it’s least visible — then teaching a student how to critically assess those messages is important.
Two people can listen to the same song and have different interpretations — and that’s OK, she said. The class won’t tell students what to take away from the songs or messages, rather how to critically assess them.
“If you’re someone who feels that ideology is dripping from the airwaves and Hollywood, then don’t you want somebody teaching people how to be media literate, and how to be rhetorically savvy when they hear stuff, and to be able to critically assess it?” Ramsey said.