A Penn State University branch campus has caught Taylor Swift fever and will be offering a course about the pop star next school year.
The course, titled “Taylor Swift, Gender, and Communication” will be held at Penn State Berks in Reading, the singer’s hometown. It will hold 100 seats, 50 reserved for current students and 50 for incoming first-years.
Penn State said the course, which is listed as a communication arts and sciences and a women’s studies class, is slated to take a unique approach of examining Swift’s cultural and musical impact and her portrayal in the media.
The course will start with a three-week overview of the impact music has on personal identities, the historical intersections of music and politics, and gendered expectations of female performers, Penn State said.
The course will also focus on the career and media treatment of Swift, including subjects such as changes in gendered expectations in shifting from country to pop music; challenges faced by young female musicians as they move from adolescence to adulthood; and the public battles Swift has faced with other celebrities and media representations of those battles that include a tendency to pit successful women against each other.