Piedmont Community College offering Taylor Swift course in 2024

[Jonathan Whatley]

Surprise drop:

Next semester, Daphne Brooks, professor of African American Studies and music, will teach a new class titled “Beyoncé Makes History: Black Radical Tradition History, Culture, Theory & Politics through Music.” In the class, students will examine Beyoncé’s artistic work from 2013 to 2024 as a lens to study Black history, intellectual thought and performance. […]

Students will participate in discussions surrounding readings from scholars such as Hortense Spillers, the Combahee River Collective, Cedric Robinson and Karl Hagstrom Miller.

In terms of projects, students will participate in screenings of her visual albums, work with archives in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and engage with public humanities projects designed to study Beyoncé’s physical impact on the Black community. Students will also be encouraged to create playlists connecting Beyoncé’s music to those of her influences.

“[This class] seemed good to teach because [Beyoncé] is just so ripe for teaching at this moment in time,” Brooks said. “The number of breakthroughs and innovations she’s executed and the way she’s interwoven history and politics and really granular engagements with Black cultural life into her performance aesthetics and her utilization of her voice as a portal to think about history and politics — there’s just no one like her.”

Yale to offer new course on Beyoncé’s cultural impact in spring 2025 (Olivia Cyrus, The Yale Daily News, November 8, 2024)