Thanks to a handful of universities and colleges around the world offering Taylor Swift coded courses, becoming an honorary Swiftie by way of study is easier now than ever before.
Swifties can opt into these courses ranging from literature to social psychology at schools like Ghent University in Belgium, University of Texas at Austin, New York University, Stanford, or Arizona State University. All of these universities have offered or are currently offering a course focused on Swift’s lyrics, discography, as well as her potential impact.
If you are interested in learning how the pop singer’s lyrics relate to themes present in social psychology, Arizona State has a course for you.
The new course, named Psychology of Taylor Swift – Advanced Topics of Social Psychology will be offered in the fall semester.
Alexandra Wormley, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology will be teaching the course.
Wormley told ASU News she feels using Swift as an entry point “will spark meaningful conversations and serve as a teaching tool for learning advanced psychology concepts.”
“The course is basically using Taylor Swift as a semester-long example of different phenomena — gossip, relationships, revenge,” Wormley said.
Here’s everything we know about the class.
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While the course’s appeal to Swifties should be obvious, Wormley stresses that “the class is not a seminar on how much we like or dislike her — we want to be able to learn about psychology.”
Wormley told ASU News she’s not presuming “any prior knowledge about Taylor Swift in my lectures” and is actually hoping some Taylor Swift haters — who we’ve learned are “gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate” — do sign up to take the class, all the better to challenge the Swifties with other perspectives.
In the course notes on ASU’s website, Wormley writes, “To be clear, this course will not focus on an analysis of Taylor herself. Instead, we will learn about advanced topics in social psychology that feature in her work, her life, and her fans, including romantic relationships, fiction/escapism, revenge, and social development.”
The goal of the course, Wormley adds, “is to deepen your understanding of a variety of topics within social psychology through empirical readings, in-class discussions and research question generation.”
As to why she thinks Swift’s lyrics will enhance the understanding of psychology, Wormley told ASU News, “Research has shown time and time again that when students can relate their course material to their own lives, it increases comprehension and retention. As educators, we should be taking advantage of this little quirk in our brains to foster learning.”
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Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.
