Starting this upcoming spring semester, Yale University will offer a class titled “Beyonce Makes History: Black Radical Tradition History, Culture, Theory & Politics Through Music.” The aim, according to its course description, is to use her work as a lens through which to examine Black intellectual thought and activism.
Following Beyoncé’s innovations and influence from her self-titled 2013 album to her latest, “Cowboy Carter,” students will analyze her albums, performance politics and concert films.
By looking at her midcareer repertoire, Yale’s new course will explore scholarly works and cultural texts across Black feminist theory, philosophy and anthropology, as well as art history, performance studies and musicology, the course description states.
The new class will be taught by writer and Black studies scholar Daphne Brooks, who co-founded Yale’s Black Sound & the Archive Working Group, a community of faculty and students working to “explore the untapped variety of black sound archives.”
“I’m looking forward to exploring her body of work and considering how, among other things, historical memory, Black feminist politics, Black liberation politics and philosophies course through the last decade of her performance repertoire,” Brooks wrote, “as well as the ways that her unprecedented experimentations with the album form, itself, have provided her with the platform to mobilize these themes.”
The course adds Yale to a string of universities that have created courses inspired by Beyoncé over the past decade or so.
Cornell University has also offered versions of its “Beyoncé Nation” course, which studies her career trajectory as well as her impact on political activism and feminism. Other universities that have offered similar Beyoncé-themed courses include the University of Texas at San Antonio, California Polytechnic State University and Arizona State University.
And in the wake of Taylor Swift’s album rerecordings and “Eras Tour,” which shot her to wider fame in recent years, multiple colleges — including Harvard University, UC Berkeley and the University of Florida — also began offering courses studying her lyricism and pop superstardom.
Film Education: Pop Culture Studies–Beyoncé, Taylor Swift
Starting this upcoming spring semester, Yale University will offer a class titled “Beyonce Makes History: Black Radical Tradition History, Culture, Theory & Politics Through Music.” The aim, according to its course description, is to use her work as a lens through which to examine Black intellectual thought and activism.
Following Beyoncé’s innovations and influence from her self-titled 2013 album to her latest, “Cowboy Carter,” students will analyze her albums, performance politics and concert films.
By looking at her midcareer repertoire, Yale’s new course will explore scholarly works and cultural texts across Black feminist theory, philosophy and anthropology, as well as art history, performance studies and musicology, the course description states.
The new class will be taught by writer and Black studies scholar Daphne Brooks, who co-founded Yale’s Black Sound & the Archive Working Group, a community of faculty and students working to “explore the untapped variety of black sound archives.”
“I’m looking forward to exploring her body of work and considering how, among other things, historical memory, Black feminist politics, Black liberation politics and philosophies course through the last decade of her performance repertoire,” Brooks wrote, “as well as the ways that her unprecedented experimentations with the album form, itself, have provided her with the platform to mobilize these themes.”
The course adds Yale to a string of universities that have created courses inspired by Beyoncé over the past decade or so.
Courses on the star’s political and cultural influence since the early 2010s, with Rutgers University’s “Politicizing Beyoncé” class and a “Beyonce: Critical Feminist Perspectives and U.S. Black Womanhood” course at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
And in the wake of Taylor Swift’s album rerecordings and “Eras Tour,” which shot her to wider fame in recent years, multiple colleges — including Harvard University, UC Berkeley and the University of Florida — also began offering courses studying her lyricism and pop superstardom.