A new course called “Psychology of Taylor Swift” is launching this fall at Arizona State University, and it’s becoming as popular as you’d think.
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Originally written by PhD student Alexandra Wormley as an idea to banter with students, the undergraduate course will use topics within Taylor Swift’s albums and public life as examples of social psychology at work. According to the class listing, themes of “romantic relationships, fiction/escapism, revenge, and social development” all feature in Taylor Swift’s works, which will be used to “deepen [students’] understanding of a variety of topics within social psychology.”
“Research has shown time and time again that when students can relate their course material to their own lives, it increases comprehension and retention,” Professor Wormley told ASU News. The professor was not a Swiftie herself and didn’t set out to create a course about the singer, but found that it was an applicable way to reach her students. “The course is basically using Taylor Swift as a semester-long example of different phenomena — gossip, relationships, revenge.” For example, anyone with pop culture knowledge can understand that the reputation album was in defiance of drama between the singer and then-couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. “The students know this,” Wormley stated, “but do they know why we like revenge? Do they know how we enact revenge? Social psychology can tell us.”
But don’t be mistaken, the ‘Taylor Swift Psychology’ course won’t be all fun and games. “This class will not be a three-hour fan club meeting,” said Wormley, adding that the students will be expected to “engage seriously” with social psychology and only use Swift as a means of application or example. In fact, she encouraged non-Swifties and even Swift haters to join in, telling the ASU news outlet that, “I actually hope someone who is not a fan takes the class. The class will be much more engaging if we can challenge ourselves to think from other perspectives, like that of a Taylor Swift hater… I do not presume any prior knowledge about Taylor Swift in my lectures.”
ASU won’t be the first to launch a Swift-themed undergraduate course, with NYU launching a Taylor-only music industry course in 2022, and University of Texas at Austin creating the course, “Literary Contests and Contexts — The Taylor Swift Songbook.” Even Stanford will host a limited course this coming winter. The class “All Too Well (10 Week Version)” is set to spend all its time analyzing the music. Looks like there will be a lot of Taylor studies coming to a graduation near you, are you ready for it?
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