Key Points
I went on to design a summer school course at Queen Mary University of London on Taylor Swift and Literature in 2023..
But before she became the topic of lectures and seminars, Swifts work was something that a lot of people including our students were already reading and discussing with the kind of attention often granted to texts in literature classrooms...
This emphasis on Swifts new proximity, and potential similarity, to the most famous English language writer makes me think that the interest in classes on Taylor Swift and literature is led not so much by an interest in Swift being taught, but in her being an author...
However, as someone who teaches the writings of both Shakespeare and Swift, I can say this: teaching each of them leads to the same conversations about how a popular form (whether dramatic writing or song lyrics) takes on literary value, and how hard it is to separate what we think and how we feel about a work from the value we are taught to give to it by its place in society...
A class on reading Swifts work as literature is just another English class, because every English class requires grappling with the idea of reading anything as literature..
