Yale University students will soon have the opportunity to take a course entirely focused on Beyonce, according to school officials. The class, titled Beyonce Makes History: Black Radical Tradition History, Culture, Theory & Politics through Music, will be taught by African American studies and music professor Daphne Brooks in the upcoming spring semester, The Guardian reported.
Brooks, who previously taught Black Women in Popular Music Culture at Princeton, co-founded Yale's Black Sound & the Archive Working Group. This will be her first course centred solely on Beyonce, who has won 32 Grammy awards and achieved a rare level of political influence within the music industry.
Brooks's new course joins a growing trend of university classes analyzing pop culture icons. Other universities have offered courses on figures like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Harrison Ford.
In an interview with The Guardian, Brooks shared that both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as colleagues and staff, had shown "waves of excitement" about the course. Yale, she said, required no convincing to approve it. Brooks explained, "This is the first time I've been able to focus an entire course on the profound socio-political and intellectual evolution in Beyonce's work since her 2013 self-titled album."
She added that the course would explore Beyonce's body of work and examine themes like historical memory, Black feminist and liberation politics, and her innovative approach to the album as a form, which has allowed her to highlight these themes.
Though Beyonce's political involvement is limited, she frequently makes headlines when she does engage. She performed at both of Barack Obama's presidential inaugurations in 2009 and 2013, and more recently, allowed Kamala Harris's presidential campaign to use her song Freedom as its anthem. Beyonce, also endorsed Harris, speaking at a rally in her hometown of Houston, Texas, where she addressed the audience not as a celebrity or politician, but "as a mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in."
Classes on major pop culture figures, like Yale's new Beyonce; course, often attract large interest. When Harvard offered Taylor Swift and Her World earlier this year, 300 students enrolled. Brooks's Beyonce, class will be offered through multiple departments, including African American studies, women's, gender and sexuality studies, American studies, and music.
