While Northwestern course offerings may sometimes seem mundane, a class featuring case studies of Taylor Swift’s music is sure to turn heads.
Medill sophomore Olivia Teeter said she was scrolling through literature class options last quarter when the course “Literatures of the Ancient World: Love Scripts: From Sappho to Taylor Swift” caught her eye.
“I’m a big Taylor Swift fan,” Teeter said. “So that got my attention.”
Although the sight of a class description reading “Taylor Swift” initially attracted Teeter to the class, she has stayed for academic reasons. Teeter added that she enjoys reading poetry from other cultures in the class in addition to Swift’s work.
The class syllabus includes readings from various ancient cultures including Greece, Rome and Egypt. Students are invited to present a modern love song that matches the rhetorical tropes of the readings.
Bienen and SESP freshman Rebecca Marchan-Espino said they took the class because the works studied would help them as a voice and opera major, as they are required to sing in various languages.
“The class covers poetry from different ages and countries,” Marchan-Espino said. “I thought it’d be useful as I could apply it to my own work.”
NU joins universities such as NYU, UC Berkeley and Stanford that have courses that feature Swift’s work, sparking a new wave of pop culture being incorporated in literature classes. While this class does not focus solely on Swift’s work, it shows the similarities and differences between Swift and ancient love poets’ ideas of love.
This quarter marks Weinberg Prof. Marianne Hopman’s third time teaching the class, she said, adding that the cultural aspect of the class can be beneficial for students.
“The detour through different cultures helps us understand our own culture better,” Hopman said.
When determining the topic for this quarter, Hopman said she wanted to connect the past and present in a way that was interesting to students.
On the first day of class, students analyzed Taylor Swift’s song “invisible string” from her album “folklore” which explores the phenomenon of two people being made for each other and destined to end up together.
“It’s an idea you don’t find in antiquity,” Hopman said. “I think it might be liberating to understand that this is very much a modern construct.”
Weinberg freshman Riley Meyer said she chose the class because she wants to pursue a classics minor, and she took a class with Hopman during Fall Quarter.
Meyer added that it is important to learn how love has evolved over time.
“I feel like love is so prevalent in our lives,” she said. “I think it’s cool to see the changes in how people think about it.”
Meyer said she also found it interesting that ideas about love from thousands of years ago can still apply today.
In addition to learning about ideas of love over time, Marchan-Espino said the course makes poetry more accessible as an art form.
“I feel like we think poetry is very pretentious,” Marchan-Espino said. “So I think the course makes poetry more approachable.”
Hopman hopes that students develop close reading and poetry analysis skills, but also that the course enriches students’ personal lives, she said.
Hopman is so far succeeding at her goal, as Meyer said she and other students have enjoyed the class so far. Teeter agreed, saying she enjoyed the discussion portion of the class because hearing different interpretations of the poems causes her to “think about the poems very differently.”
Meyer also said being in college lets students take classes they might not have thought about before that allow them to fully explore their interests.
“I never would have an opportunity to take a class like that in high school,” Meyer said. “You’re getting comparative literature, and you’re also getting to analyze songs you listen to and love.”
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