UVic encourages Swiftness in the classroom with new Taylor-made music course

Taylor Swift is the most famous person on the planet, according to a UVic professor teaching an all-Swift course starting next month. Photo-Illustration: Shutterstock

As myriad Island Swifties prepare to join a sold-out BC Place Stadium for the first of the final three shows of “The Eras Tour” Friday night in Vancouver, a UVic professor is prepping his syllabus for a new course on Taylor Swift.

Prof. Stephen Ross learned earlier this week that Billboard Magazine has named Beyonce the world’s greatest pop star of the 21st century, and says he instantly knew he would pivot to address that when he begins teaching the course next month.

“Of course, they're catching all kinds of flack and blowback and things like that but even if you read that piece they say, ‘Oh, you know, strictly by the numbers, no one compares to Taylor Swift.’”

UVic has joined a growing list of colleges and universities by introducing English 240—Major Author: Taylor Swift, offering a deep diva dive into the most googled person on the planet.

“I think she's easily the most famous person in the world today,” Ross tells Capital Daily.

Institutions of higher learning have offered courses on musicians since the Beatles, so it should be no surprise there’s a Swiftie course.

“She has outperformed everybody, including the Beatles, in sales, No. 1 hits, weeks at No. 1, consecutive albums that debut at No. 1,” Ross says.

Late, great Beatle John Lennon may have bit off more than he could chew when he famously said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, but Ross says as important and iconic as the Fab Four were, their penetration into the world’s cultural psyche pales in comparison to Swift’s.

Billy may have it wrong about the Beatles

After attending a Swift concert in Florida last year, piano man Billy Joel said: "The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania,” but Ross reminds us that any attempt to compare Beatlemania and Swiftamania is folly when you consider the multitude of differences in technology—including streaming and social media.

“The Beatles were a boomer phenomenon,” he says. “Their numbers are nothing compared to what you have now in the digital age,” he says.

The Beatles were prolific over their seven years as a group, always within the collective consciousness—and even recently delivering new music—while Swift has been giving us music for nearly 20 years and has released almost one-third more songs, or poems, as Ross put it (300+ to 219).

She sure makes the economy sing along

The UVic course, which runs until early April, will scrutinize Swift’s 11 studio albums—one LP each week—looking at literary references, the power of her words in her videos, and Swift’s ascendancy as a cultural and economic force, one that will have generated an estimated $28B in economic spinoff for the 21 countries she’s performed in over the last 18 months when her Eras tour comes to an end under the dome Sunday night.

Destination Vancouver estimates the economic impact of the three Vancouver concerts at $150M+, including 80K+ hotel rooms booked (many going for $1K+ per night), food, drinks, and transportation.

The tour will be the first to gross $1B, but Swift’s ability to make money is not the main focus of the course, which booked up quickly and has 50+ on a waiting list.

Highly 'quoted poet'

“I like to say she is easily the most quoted poet in the history of the world,” says Ross, a UVic prof since 2001, specializing in 20th and 21st-century literature and culture.

Ross says the 200 or so students who’ll fit into the classroom—like her concerts, her course was a tough ticket—will examine the literary skills that make the 34-year-old Swift a major author and cultural marvel.

“More people have lines of her verses at the tip of their tongue at any moment than any, maybe all other poets combined,” Ross says.

The course will explore cultural elements such as shifts in the political landscape of the US in the years Swift put out an album and examine what was going on “economically, politically, in terms of sexual and racial politics and things like that, to give her albums a little bit more credit for being engaged with the world than sometimes people do.”

Classic writing references

The second part of the class will be an intensive literary interpretation and reading of her songs and a comparison of them with other literary works.

“F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a key sort of thing that she returns to, and Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca,” Ross says.

“She's got a lot of classic film references— Rear Window shows up.”

As does Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, to which Swift gives a happy ending, along with the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson.

Ross says he will even look at Swift through a theological lens.

“I think she was just raised as a Christian in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, but by midway through her body of work, there's more and more stuff in the albums that sort of indicates either that there's been a crisis of faith or a lapse in faith or a loss of faith,” he tells Capital Daily.

“You know something has happened, so we'll be talking about that, too.”

Ross says Swift doesn’t draw much attention to them but she makes a lot of biblical references in her songs.

“I'm not sure the Swifties have really paid attention to those but I think that may be one of the things that's most surprising to people who think they already know what she's about.”

Swift eponymously thrives

Ross sees Swift as a person who emits kindness—she donates thousands of dollars to food banks at each stop. She’s also an in-charge commodity: an astute business person savvy enough to invite 500 surprised Swifties to her home to hear her new album—before it drops.

“She has this uncanny ability to make her fans feel like they are authentically connected with her,” he says.

“She's fascinating in that respect for me, as well as just being an extraordinary poet.”

So, who’s this class for?

"I think it's for anybody who's interested in our world, in understanding these kinds of big phenomena, trying to make sense of them, and trying to understand what’s the deal—why is she so popular?”