Harvard University's Taylor Swift course seeks teaching assistants who "love Tay"
CAMBRIDGE - Are you a Taylor Swift "Lover"? Harvard University is seeking teaching assistants for a new course in the spring that is all about the superstar singer-songwriter and her global impact.
Course instructor Stephanie Burt put out the plea for help on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday and invited interested Swifties to send her a message.
Ok I'm doing this. Our Taylor Swift course at Harvard is so popular that we need additional teaching assistants. If you live in the Boston/Providence metro, love Tay, & have *qualifications or experience to teach a writing intensive college course,* my DMs are open.
— Stephanie Burt (also elsewhere) (@accommodatingly) January 3, 2024
"Our Taylor Swift course at Harvard is so popular that we need additional teaching assistants," Burt posted. "If you live in the Boston/Providence metro, love Tay, & have *qualifications or experience to teach a writing intensive college course,* my DMs are open."
Harvard grad students get first priority for the roles, but the university does look for outside assistance for popular classes, Burt explained further.
She told WBZ-TV's Penny Kmitt on Friday that it didn't take long for a flood of applications to come pouring in.
"I went from not having enough people who [were qualified] to having dozens, possibly 150, applications in just a few hours," Burt said.
What's being taught in Harvard's Taylor Swift course?
The course that nearly 300 students have signed up for is called "English 183ts. Taylor Swift and Her World." And students will do a lot more than just discuss their favorite Swift tracks.
"Today she's the most recognizable country-- or formerly country? or pop?-- artist in North America, if not the world: her songwriting takes in half a dozen genres, and her economic impact changes cities," the course description states. "We will learn how to study fan culture, celebrity culture, adolescence, adulthood and appropriation; how to think about white texts, Southern texts, transatlantic texts, and queer subtexts."
Burt told WBZ-TV that students will discuss a different piece of Swift's work each week.
"The way she reaches to other parts of culture, she's someone I feel good teaching a class about and someone who Harvard students already like and want to take classes about," Burt said. "We can, and even we should, through her work, make connections between what she does and other great artists who have used words in other art forms in the present and past."
Berklee College of Music in Boston had a class in the fall about Swift's songwriting techniques, with the goal of helping young artists write their own material.
Swift was named 2023 Person of the Year by Time magazine, and she recently became a billionaire. She played three sold-out concerts in Foxboro last May and returned in December to watch boyfriend Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs beat the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium.