Students are expecting a ‘battle to the death’ to get a place in Taylor Swift’s new class

US Stanford University student Ava Jeffs is in her tenure as a professor.

A rising sophomore and lifelong Swiftie — a term used to describe pop music fans Taylor Swift — is creating the curriculum for a new English class that looks at the singer’s writing throughout her career.

Swift is in the middle of a world tour, called the Eras Tour, which takes fans on a three-hour journey through her 10 albums.

Her most recent single, Midnights – which dropped last October and broke Spotify’s record for most singles released in a single day – was described by Swift as “the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life”.

“The whole purpose of this class is to get into the art of songwriting, to look at the interplay between text and music and storytelling throughout Taylor Swift’s discography, to take one album at a time and try to look at the evolution of the use of music as a means of expression, ” said Jeffs.

“It will match the classics and poems in each album and give a deeper understanding of the power of music.”

The class is called The Last Great American Songwriter: Storytelling by Taylor Swift through the Eras, and is a play on Swift’s song The Last Great American Dynasty from her eighth album, Folklore.

It is Swift’s second class at Stanford after All Too Well (Ten Week Version) was taught earlier this year and gave students the opportunity to analyze a 10-minute song of the same name.

Jeffs, a computer science major, said the inspiration for the course comes from his love of Swift and all music.

Growing up, she remembers her mother driving her to Target to buy the singer’s latest albums.

He said: “When I listen to music, I become a person of great music, so I like to know what it means.”

Her Stanford application story was also based on the song White from the 1989 album – a song she described as “healing” for her as she struggled with an eating disorder.

To get the course approved, Jeffs created his own syllabus and approached almost every professor in the English department until Professor Mark McGurl agreed to be an assistant professor.

Jeffs will oversee curriculum and instruction, while McGurl will ensure classroom integrity and placement.

Stanford spokeswoman Luisa Rapport said in an email that the class is part of the university’s Student Initiated Course program.

“There are limited Student Scholarships that are offered quarterly,” Rapport said. “Student Introductory Courses are considered ‘practice courses,’ and allow students to explore areas of interest or achievement.”

These grades are graded as either “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” and are not based on student GPAs.

Oriana Riley, a Stanford junior who has been a fan of Swift’s since the singer’s 2012 album Red, said she hopes to “fight to the death” during the registration process. He hopes to take the course if he gets in.

“I think he’s a fictional character based on a fictional character,” Riley said of Swift. “She makes great music year after year. I also think she’s a great role model for teenage girls and college-age girls.”

Stanford is not the first university to offer Swift-centric classes in recent years. Similar courses are available at the University of Texas, NYU and Berklee College of Music.

Robert Thompson, director at Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, said pop culture classes have been popping up in colleges since the 1980s. At the time, Madonna’s classes were student-friendly — and often controversial.

“If the job of a university is to try to learn about social issues, yes, it is important that we learn about wars and presidents. But I think it is also important that we learn about lawn decorations and sitcoms and love songs and so on,” he said. Thompson.

While Jeffs is still working out the details of the course, he hopes to focus on Swift’s ability to create entire worlds based on cities, eras, seasons and color schemes in her various albums.

She also wants to show Swift’s celebration of girlhood — especially since she said many classic books don’t have an accurate portrayal of what aging looks like for girls.

On his TikTok page, Jeffs has begun to reveal his thoughts on the course. In a video posted last Tuesday, he teased the week-by-week disruption, the second week focusing on Swift’s second album, Fearless, which Jeffs called “a season of love”.

The fifth week will focus on 1989, named after the year Swift was born, in what he called “a new city, a new era of sound”.

It was also the singer’s debut in pop music and was inspired by his move to New York City and the synth-pop sound of the 1980s.

Swift returns to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara this month, playing shows on July 28 and 29.

The Mercury News