Taylor Swift's songwriting is to be the subject of a new literature course at a Texas university.
The course - The Taylor Swift Songbook - will fill a blank space in the line-up at the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) from this autumn.
It means the pop megastar's songs will be "read" alongside other literary giants.
The course will use "the songwriting of pop music icon Taylor Swift to introduce literary critical reading and research methods-basic skills for work in English literature and other humanities disciplines," according to a description on the UTA website.
"Focusing on Swift's music and the cultural contexts in which it and her career are situated, we'll consider frameworks for understanding her work, such as poetic form, style, and history among various matters and theoretical issues important to contextualisation as we practice close and in-depth reading, evaluating secondary sources, and building strong arguments," it added.
Taylor Swift on stage during her '1989 World Tour Live' in 2015. Picture by: Sam Kovak / Alamy Stock PhotoFor those who feel ready for it, preliminary texts include albums Red (Swift's Version), Lover, Folklore and Evermore.
Professor Elizabeth Scala, who'll be teaching the course, said: "I want to take what Swift fans can already do at a sophisticated level, tease it out for them a bit with a different vocabulary, and then show them how, in fact, Swift draws on richer literary traditions in her songwriting, both topically but also formally in terms of how she uses references, metaphors, and clever manipulations of words.
"I'll be showing students that these operations and interpretive moves one makes when reading her songs are appropriate to all forms of writing," she added.
Film and TV critic Deirdre Molumby told The Hard Shoulder she really likes the idea.
"I actually did English literature studies in college, I would have absolutely loved to do a course like this.
"When I was doing English always the most popular courses... were those ones that integrated something a bit more contemporary.
"Even if it was something as silly as 'How relevant is Twilight to the whole history of literature?'
"And there were some great courses there that integrated music or film or other disciplines.
"So I think absolutely: I love the fact that Taylor Swift is up there.
"I was actually looking at a few of her lyrics online, and there are entire webpages already dedicated to the countdowns of her best ones, breakdowns of what colour means in Taylor songs, what Taylor has to say about heartbreak, about youth.
"So there's already kind of an internet case for this field of study anyway", she added.
UTA follows in the footsteps of New York University (NYU), which previously offered a course on Swift as a music entrepreneur - and the various pop and country songwriters that helped shape her work.
The new course also comes after a separate university in Texas announced it will be offering a course based on the work of Harry Styles from 2023.
Additional reporting: IRN
