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my top 100 songs, FAQs, teaching Swift, Swift and lit bibliography, podcast
This post brings together some of the resources I’ve created, from my list of my favorite Swift songs (now including the new album!) to a bibliography of academic work on Swift.
Are you not sure where to start with Taylor Swift, or do you want to know what my favorite songs of hers are?
Where (I think) you should start with Taylor Swift
People sometimes ask me which songs they should listen to in order to understand Taylor Swift. The answer is “all of them” but since you can’t listen to all of them at once, I have made this list of my top hundred Swift songs. Obviously this is completely based on my personal preferences and whims and I had to omit some incredible songs! You can find my…
Do you have questions about studying Taylor Swift? This post answers some of the most frequent questions that come up.
Why read Taylor Swift as literature?
This week’s newsletter answers some questions I get a lot, starting with the big one. Why read Taylor Swift as literature? Taylor Swift was already in the academy before we started teaching classes on her - in the conversations we and our students were having, in the backs of our minds, in the methods we borrowed from our study of other texts to help us …
Do you want to know what my class on Swift looks like?
"Taylor Swift and Literature" syllabus
Because I am sometimes asked what I teach in my Taylor Swift and Literature class at the Queen Mary University of London summer school, I’ve attached a snapshot of the syllabus for this year’s iteration. This may change as the class goes on!
Are you working on an academic project on Taylor Swift and literature or do you just want to know what academic work on the topic is out there?
Bibliography
This is a bibliography of academic writing that discusses Swift’s work from the perspective of literature and related fields such as gender and media studies. I have also included selected work in the field of literature and music more broadly, mostly focusing on discussions of Bob Dylan (this is based on my personal interests; people write much more wi…
Do you want to listen to some episodes of my podcast, Studies in Taylor Swift?
My favorite episodes of "Studies in Taylor Swift"
My book, Dear Reader: Taylor Swift and the Idea of English Literature, isn’t coming out for a while. But starting to write it has meant looking back at some of my favorite episodes from my podcast, Studies in Taylor Swift. These episodes, although on different topics, share a preoccupation: the grotesqueness of the creative act and the unpredictable str…
Do you want to read some of my public writing on Swift?
Why Taylor Swift Belongs on English Literature Degree Courses (The Conversation)
I am a Yale educated academic and this is why Taylor Swift should be studied like Jonathan Swift (I did not choose the title and I know they made changes to this after I submitted it including crowbarring in some stuff about Jonathan Swift lol but it’s behind a paywall so I can’t say how extensive the changes are - enjoy at your own discretion)
Swift or Shakespeare? How to reframe internet ephemera as a text in the literature classroom (THE Campus)
Or just wait for my book!
Do you want to hear more from me on the topic of Swift and Literature?