UP Diliman Set To Offer A Celebrity Studies Class On Taylor Swift

Just when you thought the Eras craze was over, the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman is set to hold the first academic class on Taylor Swift in the next semester—the first in the Philippines.

BMAS 196 Celebrity Studies: Taylor Swift in Focus is a three-hour weekly lecture on the “conception, construction, and performance of Taylor Swift as a celebrity and how she can be used to explain our and, of course, media’s relationship with class, politics, gender, race, and fantasies of success and mobility.” It will be taught by UPD Associate Professor Cherish Aileen Brillon in the second semester of AY 2023-2024.

“There have been many courses about Taylor Swift in universities abroad and I think there hasn’t been one in the Philippines yet. This is a bit surprising since we are a Taylor Swift nation. We figure prominently in the top listeners and streamers of her songs, we have Taylor Sheesh who’s one of the biggest Taylor drag performers, and right now with her Eras Tour, which is one of the biggest historically, I think it’s time for us here in the Philippines to look at her in an in-depth manner,” Brillon told SPOT.ph in an interview.

Brillon is right. Universities like Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Stanford have been offering classes on Taylor Swift—her music, her inspiration, and her cultural influence—since last year. CNN called the singer-songwriter “the Trojan horse of academia.” It was only a matter of time before the Philippines offered a course of its own.

What to know about the Taylor Swift class in UP Diliman

Where most courses on Taylor Swift often focus on her storytelling in music or her impact in the commercial side of the music industry, the UP Department of Broadcast Communication (DBC) is taking a more distinct approach.

“Since we at the UP Department of Broadcast Communication specialize in media studies, we set our Taylor Swift studies apart from the others by anchoring it from our discipline, hence we want to look at her from a celebrity studies perspective,” Brillon said.

And who else is more fitting to teach this class than a Swiftie? Brillon has been a fan since the Red album came out in 2012. For her, how Swifties operate might even be reflective of a larger trend—one that goes beyond music and into the realm of political activism.

“More importantly for me as a Filipino media studies scholar, I am interested, with the help of those who will enrol in the class, how we Filipinos have appropriated Taylor Swift not only as a transnational icon, but as a signifier of an emerging type of local fandom activism which has played a huge part in the recently concluded elections,” Brillon said.

BMAS 196 is currently reserved for DBC students, but there is hope for those who are not: Brillon said there is a chance to open this course to other students in the next semesters based on the demand.

This story originally appeared on Spot.ph.

Minor edits have been made by the Smartparenting.com.ph editors.