KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 8 — A Harvard University course on pop singer Taylor Swift has become so popular that it is hiring teaching assistants for help.
According to CBS, over 300 students signed up for the course, causing course instructor Stephanie Burt to turn to X on January 3 to recruit qualified Swifties to teach it.
Ok I'm doing this. Our Taylor Swift course at Harvard is so popular that we need additional teaching assistants. If you live in the Boston/Providence metro, love Tay, & have *qualifications or experience to teach a writing intensive college course,* my DMs are open.
— Stephanie Burt (also elsewhere) (@accommodatingly) January 3, 2024
“Our Taylor Swift course at Harvard is so popular that we need additional teaching assistants,” Burt wrote.
The instructor encouraged those from Boston who love ‘Tay’ and have qualifications in teaching a writing course to message her directly.
Burt had no problem finding suitable candidates as over a hundred Swifties offered their ‘expertise’ to teach the course.
“I went from not having enough people who were qualified to having dozens, possibly 150, applications in just a few hours,” she told WBZ-TV on Friday.
The course, titled English 183ts. Taylor Swift and Her World, will be more than just a class for students to discuss their favourite Swift songs.
It will dive into fan culture, celebrity culture, adolescence, adulthood and appropriation and how to analyse white texts, Southern texts, transatlantic texts, and queer subtexts.
“The way she reaches to other parts of culture, she’s someone I feel good teaching a class about and someone who Harvard students already like and want to take classes about.
“We can, and even we should, through her work, make connections between what she does and other great artists who have used words in other art forms in the present and past.”
The class is set to begin in the 2024 Spring term on January 22.
