Yale University is training with a course dedicated to the study of Beyoncé.
Starting next spring semester, Yale will offer a course titled “Beyoncé Makes History: History, Culture, Theory, and Politics of the Black Radical Tradition through Music.” The goal, according to the course description, is to use her work as a lens through which to examine black intellectual thought and activism.
It is the latest university course to tackle pop culture-inspired themes by focusing on a global music superstar, as universities around the world have adopted courses on the cultural impact of celebrities such as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
Tracking Beyoncé’s innovations and influence, from her 2013 self-titled album to her latest “Cowboy Carter,” students will analyze her albums, performance politics, and concert films.
Examining her mid-career repertoire, the new Yale course will explore scholarly works and cultural texts in black feminist theory, philosophy and anthropology, as well as art history, performance studies and musicology, indicates the course description.
The course 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 the black sound archive.” .
Brooks said via email that the course has been in the works for years. Having previously taught a course titled “Black Women and Popular Music Culture” at Princeton University, Brooks said this would be her first opportunity to dedicate an entire lecture to Beyoncé’s work.
“I look forward to exploring her work and considering how, among other things, historical memory, black feminist politics, black liberation politics, and philosophies have evolved through the last decade of her performance repertoire,” wrote Brooks, “as well as the way in which his unprecedented experiments with the album form itself provided him with the platform to mobilize these themes.”
This course adds Yale to a string of universities that have created Beyoncé-inspired courses over the past decade.
Courses on the political and cultural influence of the star have emerged since the early 2010s, with Rutgers University.Politicizing Beyoncé“class and one”Beyoncé: critical feminist perspectives and black femininity in the United States» course at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Cornell University has also offered versions of its “Beyoncé Nation”, which studies her professional career 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 following the re-recordings of Taylor Swift’s album and “Eras Tour,” which brought her even greater fame in recent years, several universities — including Harvard University, UC Berkeley and the University from Florida – have also started introduction to courses suited to the study of his lyricism and pop superstardom.
