13 Students Take Class on Taylor Swift at UT Austin

Taylor Swift – a household and classroom name.

“The past is still living in this love poet,” Elizabeth Scala said when asked about what she teaches in her Taylor Swift-centered class at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Scala is a professor at UT Austin who has taught a variety of courses including topics such as the plays of Shakespeare, gothic and Romantic medievalism, Victorian book history, children’s fantasy literature, and modern film. She’s interested in the ways in which “medieval texts survive as material objects in the modern world.” 

Enter “The Taylor Swift Songbook,” a lower-division liberal arts honors class for students who aim to major in English or participate in the English Honors Program at UT.

Unintentionally nodding to Swift, Scala said the class holds 13 students, Swift’s lucky number. “The class is very responsive to students in it,” Scala told me. 

Scala uses Swift and her lyricism to understand research methodologies and English literature. She holds class 3 days a week so each student can take in the complex information in “smaller bites.” As a professor who has been teaching for 30 years, Scala understands the importance of flexibility. 

Scala’s class demographic includes a mix of Swifties and poetry lovers. Her class has one prerequisite: you can’t dislike Swift. She also has one promise: you will have a greater appreciation for Swift and her work after this class. 

While I would do nearly anything to take this class, Scala finds this isn’t always the case for her students. A lot of students anticipate the class will be “easy” and it’s “just music.” 

Scala ensures that the class is much more than that. 

She finds that some students even deem the topic of Swift secondary and are primarily focused on English topics. But this is no problem for Scala – she uses Swift as a vehicle to help others interpret the literature she loves and finds present in our modern day; it's just hidden away in poetic songs rather than Shakespearean plays.

Scala treats Swift’s songs like the historical literature she teaches rather than talking about Swift herself. While many students are usually thoroughly informed on Swift and her love, life, and liberty, Scala “uses that interest but unplugs it.” She humorously told me that she knows every literature professor wants their students to know the quotes they teach, but her Swiftie students take that to the next level. She finds her students know the work she teaches “better than she does.”

Scala appreciates Swift inside and outside of class – “She’s on all the time, it's my homework.” She tries to catch up with her students and their knowledge despite being a long-time Swiftie herself. While not having the pleasure of taking Scala’s class, I can only imagine the discussions are beyond engaging; it’s not often students know just as much as their professors about a subject. Similarly, it’s not often one single living pop star merits this amount of thought and discussion. 

Swift and her work are unique, idiosyncratic concepts to teach. Scala respects this by making her class about more than Swift’s life. She makes it about her work, the hidden and blatant messages, her talent, and everything in between. She delicately studies Swift. So much so she teaches students how to tell the difference between “All Too Well” (the 5 minute version) and “All Too Well” (the 10 minute version) based solely on the notes. 

As a graduate of Harvard’s Ph.D. program, Scala is well-versed in literature and poetry and uses that to further appreciate Swift’s work, and vice versa. Swift and the literature Scala teaches are dependable on each other in order to learn the material. Through 500-word essays every Friday and one final paper, students can analyze one of Swift’s verses with the Oxford Dictionary and build up their knowledge to analyze an “interpreted” controversy of Swift’s.

Scala teaches the complexities of Swift’s work in hopes that her students can create their own thoughts and complexities about the intertwining of historical literary arts and current popular music. On account of Scala, her students do just that – “They want to do more than I assign them…They’re open to volunteering…it’s very luxurious,” she says.

Scala honors old poetry that people have no patience for with the world’s favorite tortured poet – Swift. Scala recounts that this old poetry comes from a universe of “male-to-female seduction” and “slapping it next to Taylor Swift” shows that those concepts are still alive and well and present in our everyday music. We celebrate that, so why only tolerate it in old English? 

Scala starts the semester by analyzing Swift’s song “Lover.” She recounts an interview the New York Times did with Swift’s producer Jack Antonoff and sound engineer Laura Sisk. Antonoff and Sisk recount how Swift wrote the song and how wedding vows carry the bridge, but Scala argues that wedding vows frame the entirety of the song. “The author knows something but not everything about her own work,” Scala says. 

As the class moves, Scala even teaches Marxism using Swift’s “the last great american dynasty.” She points out the gratification of homes and houses and winning and wealth that this song recounts. She teaches “august” and “tolerate it,” “tolerate it” being taught by reading Rebecca and watching the Hitchcock film. However, her favorite album is Red. As we share our favorite albums (mine being 1989), she wittingly says that a student’s favorite album is their “gateway album,” the album they heard in middle school. And of course, in my case, she’s right. 

Scala does not teach complete albums; she focuses on individual songs. This ensures each song gets the attention it deserves, especially “champagne problems,” which Scala says is arguably one of Swift’s “best songs” and “gets into the mix of women talking back.” 

Utilizing novels, films, and Shakespeare, Scala is eager to teach this class. With the new release of The Tortured Poets Department, she hopes to have students pick the songs they want to be taught. 

Scala is proud of her class, and so is UT. The English department even did a video on the class. She prides herself in taking a required class and making it more enjoyable, unique, and applicable to pop culture today.   

As Scala was “bored and tired of everything” during the pandemic, listening to Taylor’s version of Red, she realized there was just “so much going on.” Swift’s work lent itself to a class she was previously teaching about Harry Potter. Scala emphasizes how special Swift is right now in terms of how she’s “lit up more than just young people and women.” Scala does not let the enormous effect Swift has had on our current global culture go unnoticed – “It begs analysis and her music means a lot to her audience. It’s worth studying,” Scala said. 

The love poet who's worth studying.

Scala’s love for Swift goes beyond the classroom. “She’s part of girl culture, like Barbie,” Scala emphasizes. Scala speaks of the “tsunami of popularity” Swift has had as an artist in her “non-sexualization era.” “It says a lot about her…that wasn’t her path,” Scala said. 

As our interview ended, I yearned to speak with Scala more. My final question was about her goals for students. 

She wants students to “slow down” and not “jump into narratives the song does not contain.” She wants students to appreciate more about Swift than just her “relatability.” 

Scala honors Swift through the work she teaches, and Swift honors the work Scala teaches.

To keep up with Professor Scala, follow her on Instagram @swiftieprof.