The University of Miami is the latest academic institution among a list that includes Arizona State and Stanford to offer a class with Swift in its curriculum for the upcoming fall semester. It's the second class focused on the pop star at the Coral Gables campus, with the first class being an intellectual property course at UM's School of Law offered during the spring 2024 semester.
Dr. Alyse Lancaster, vice dean for academic affairs at UM's School of Communication and a seasoned expert in advertising strategy, is spearheading the course, listed as STC 290 in the school's registrar and titled "The Mastermind of the Taylor Swift Brand."
Lancaster says she often has a hard time getting students to retain the information overload that comes with typical advertising and branding classes, which she has been teaching at UM for more than two decades.
Then, after securing pre-sale tickets to the Eras Tour stop in Miami this October, her 17-year-old daughter made her a playlist that would make Lancaster realize the answer was in front of her all along.
"I realized I'm literally listening on my AirPods to the biggest brand there is," Lancaster tells New Times. "Taylor Swift is a billion-dollar brand, and she reaches an audience that's extraordinarily diverse, multicultural, and global."
The professor notes several aspects that have been wildly successful for Swift when developing her image, whether reclaiming her work as her own by re-releasing her studio albums as "Taylor's Version" or her cryptic Instagram posts riddled with Easter eggs about her upcoming projects.
While the current syllabus is ebbing and flowing as the days go by, some of the biggest themes of the course will range from identifying a target audience to using social media as a tool to communicate with audiences and freedom of expression.
Lancaster finds that learning about these concepts abstractly usually doesn't resonate with students in the long term despite being large pillars of the media industry.
So, she figured that maybe Taylor Swift would do the trick.
"Every lecture for this class will have a song at the end of the discussion, and the point of that is A) it's fun, but B) whenever they hear that song, the hope is that they'll remember the things that we talked about in that lecture," she explains. "So they won't be as likely to forget the information because they'll think, Oh, I remember when we learned 'Shake It Off,' we were learning about the impact of bullying on social media, or something to that effect.""Every student can glean something from the things that Taylor Swift has done to build her own brand."
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Whether or not students are self-proclaimed Swifties, Lancaster sees this class as an opportunity to learn valuable lessons applicable to their future careers.
"Every student can glean something from the things that Taylor Swift has done to build her own brand," Lancaster emphasizes. "The class is open to all students, and I was questioned about not just making it available to the School of Communication. I think the concepts that we're going to cover in that class are applicable to any student, whether they're majoring in education, architecture, music, or nursing. They're going to go on the job market at some point, and they're going to have to brand themselves and use social media to do it."
Class registration for the fall 2024 semester opened on April 1, and the class roster, capped initially at 150 seats, was pushed to 175 to accommodate the significant interest in the course. Incoming freshmen, in particular, have been clamoring to secure their spots, and Lancaster says she's gotten plenty of emails from students begging her to save a spot for them in August.
Anticipation is building not just among Swifties but also among students generally eager to explore the intersection of music, culture, and branding.
And if, coincidentally, Swift's publicist, Tree Paine; boyfriend, NFL player Travis Kelce; or the pop star herself were to drop by the class around the time of her concert stop in Miami, Lancaster would be more than willing to accommodate.
"I've never been more excited to teach a class," she says. "Every day, new ideas pop into my head. I'll hear a song of hers and think I can tie this into my lectures. I think the hardest part for me will be how I get it all narrowed down into 75-minute class periods. But I think it's going to be a lot of fun. She's a phenomenon. It's hard to imagine any brand being able to attract the kind of attention she has, so there's definitely things students can learn, and I'm ready to explore that."
