'The Taylor Swift Songbook' as University of Texas Course: Here's What It Is About

Months after Taylor Swift received her honorary doctorate degree from New York University, she is set to be honored in the United States academe again as the University of Texas would be offering a class about her.

Considered one of the best-selling musicians of all time, Taylor Swift's influence in music and in literature continues to expand, inspiring the academe to craft specialized courses to study her art.

This was not the first time Taylor's genre-straddling discography inspired a course. The New York University Tisch School of the Arts offered a similar program earlier this year.

University of Texas 'Taylor Swift Songbook' Course Explained

According to Billboard, the University of Texas is offering a new English course, particularly studying Taylor Swift's rich literature - her award-winning songs.

By the Fall of 2022, the "The Taylor Swift Songbook" will be offered to the University of Texas Liberal Arts Honors program's undergraduate students.

Titled "Literary Contests and Contexts - The Taylor Swift Songbook," the Taylor Swift UT course will shine light mainly on Swift's literary traditions in her songwriting process.

Taylor's work is not the only thing featured in the course, as it would also study works of literary giants like Wyatt, Keats, Plath, Dickinson, Chaucer, and even Shakespeare.

In the course, University of Texas students might need to calm down as they would not be spending hours studying literature from other generations.

A Spotify account is actually recommended as the "Taylor Swift Songbook" course includes the following albums as required texts - "Lover," "Folklore," "Evermore," and "Red (Taylor's Version).

"I want to take what Swift fans can already do at a sophisticated level, tease it out for them a bit with a different vocabulary, and then show them how, in fact, Swift draws on richer literary traditions in her songwriting, both topically but also formally in terms of how she uses references, metaphors, and clever manipulations of words. I'll be showing students that these operations and interpretive moves one makes when reading her songs are appropriate to all forms of writing," English Professor Elizabeth Scala says about the course.

Scala, who considers herself a Swiftie, will be teaching the course as a literature class rather than a music course.

Last February, New York University also offered a similar class at the Tisch School of Arts, but from a music perspective - deconstructing her aversions and appeal through analyses of her music and public discourse about her career.

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