Belgian university professor proposes Taylor Swift English course
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Professor McCausland anticipates for her course to start in September, which was originally inspired by listening to "The Great War" from the "Midnights" album.
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US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift performs during her Eras Tour at Sofi stadium in Inglewood, California, August 7, 2023. (AFP)
A literature professor in Belgium has proposed launching a course at Ghent University using US superstar Taylor Swift's songs to explore English writing and themes.
Assistant professor Elly McCausland believes that Swift's songs provide an opportunity to explore themes like feminism through "The Man", and the anti-hero theme through the song "Anti-Hero" from her 2022 album, "Midnights".
McCausland anticipated earlier for her course to start in September, which was originally inspired by listening to "The Great War" from "Midnights" album.
She told AFP: "The way she uses the war, like a metaphor for a relationship, made me a bit uncomfortable and it got me thinking about Sylvia Plath's poem 'Daddy', which does a similar thing and also it's very uncomfortable reading".
McCausland insists that her course named "Literature (Taylor's Version)" is due to make literature "more accessible" rather than "create a Swift fan club".
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"The whole point is to get people to think that English literature is not a load of old books from a long time ago festering in a library. But it's a living, breathing thing and it's continually evolving and changing," she added, stressing that even other big names could be used for the same aim.
McCausland's course uses Swift's lyrics to dive into reading some of the greats of literature such as William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and Emily Dickinson.
Swift's "Wonderland" and "long story short" mention going down a "rabbit hole" which is a reference to Lewis Carroll's famous 1865 novel "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".
Back in 2020 during a conversation with Paul McCartney published by Rolling Stone, Swift described how she was "reading so much more than I ever did" such as reading Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca".
McCausland has already received a ton of requests to join her course even from outside the university, and through private messages on Instagram.
