Stanford to offer weekly class on Swift’s 2012 hit ‘All Too Well’
Stanford students can now add Taylor Swift to their curriculum.
For its winter 2023 quarter, the university is offering a new course called “All Too Well (Ten Week Version),” which offers “an in-depth analysis” of the Grammy-winning singer’s 2012 hit “All Too Well.”
The weekly class, taught by undergraduate Nona Hungate, is part of the school’s Italic 99 courses, which “offer students an introduction to topics taught by alumni of the program.” Other courses include “Between Dimensions: An Intro to 3D Modeling” and “Listening to Music Like Your Life Depended on It.”
“With each quarter offering unique courses, these studentled classes are focused on hands-on learning and have included topics such as travel sketching, watercolor, music composition, improv acting, animation, and digital art, among many others,” the program’s website says.
Annual tuition at Stanford is $56,169.
This is not the first time Swift has been considered college material. Last year, the University of Texas offered the course “The Taylor Swift Songbook,” which analyzed “her songs as literary writing and the ways a popular and awardwinning writer uses the same literary devices, figures, and tropes of traditional poetry in her work.”
New York University also offered a course on the singer, taught by Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos, who just finished a second semester teaching the course.
“All Too Well” appears on Swift’s fourth studio album, “Red,” and was co-written by Liz Rose. Fans and critics believe the song documents the singer’s brief relationship with actor Jake Gyllenhaal in 2010 in detailed lyrics that describe a painful breakup. In 2021, Swift released an extended version, titled “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which included additional lyrics and came accompanied by a short film she directed. In May, Swift was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts from New York University. She noted in her commencement speech that she is “not the type of doctor you would want around in the case of an emergency unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section.”
Swift is scheduled to return to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara for a two-night stop during her Eras Tour on July 28-29.