Photo Credit: Beyoncé by Raph PH / CC by 2.0
Yale University is introducing a course dedicated to studying the cultural impact of Beyoncé, to kick off next spring.
A course dedicated to studying Beyoncé’s cultural impact is coming to Yale University, set to kick off next spring. Titled “Beyoncé Makes History: Back Radical Tradition History, Culture, Theory & Politics Through Music,” the course will be offered through the humanities and arts department and focus on her body of work, from her self-titled debut album to her most recent album, Cowboy Carter.
Yale’s course will also delve into Beyoncé’s performance politics and her concert films, as a lens through which students will examine black intellectualism and activism. The course will also explore scholarly works and cultural texts across black feminist theory and philosophy, performance studies, musicology, and more.
Taught by writer and black studies scholar Daphne Brooks, who co-founded Yale’s Black Sound & the Archive Working Group — faculty and students working to “explore the untapped variety of black sound archives” — the course has been in the planning stages for years.
“I’m looking forward to exploring her body of work and considering how, among other things, historical memory, black feminist politics, black liberation politics, and philosophies course through the last decade of her performance repertoire as well as the ways that her unprecedented experimentations with the album form itself, have provided her with the platform to mobilize these themes,” said Brooks in an email to NBC.
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter recently received 11 Grammy nominations, after being thoroughly snubbed at this year’s Country Music Association Awards. In total, this makes her the most Grammy-nominated artist in history, with 99 altogether.
Other universities have offered similar courses about Beyoncé and her cultural impact, including Rutgers University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Cornell University, the University of Texas at San Antonio, California Polytechnic State University, and Arizona State University.
Notably, Beyoncé isn’t the first pop star to be embraced by university courses. Lady Gaga has been the subject of a 2010 University of South Carolina module, and Taylor Swift became the focus of courses at multiple colleges, including the University of Ghent in Belgium, Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and the University of Florida. Meanwhile, New York University offered a course on Lana Del Rey.