HEADS up, Swifties! The University of the Philippines (UP) is set to offer a course around the topic of pop American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.
Faculty member of UP College of Mass Communication Cherish Aileen Brillon disclosed that the elective on Swift will be under the BA Broadcast Media Arts and Studies course. The elective is set to be offered during the second semester of the academic year 2023-2024.
Brillon said that the course will tackle the conception, construction and performance of the female idol. The course is also aimed at exploring the influence of Swift as a public persona, where the studies can be used to examine aspects of class, politics, gender, race, and the pursuit of success and mobility as portrayed by the media.
Upon taking the elective, the student will be able to explore how media representations contribute to the making of identities, the augmentation of stereotypes, and the exploration of personal and collective fantasies.
Brillon also explained that since their discipline revolves around media studies, they opted to look at her from what they call “the lens of celebrity studies.”
“This course intends to use Taylor Swift as an example to explain how the people and the media look at her,” she said.
“I think (what’s) very important for me, in the last elections, I was very much involved in the local campaign. One of the things that I noticed that the election was really a fandom-driven campaign. So there were really fans or fandom, who really campaign for a certain politician and one of the fandoms is Taylor Swift’s,” she added.
UP Department of Broadcast Communications professor Alwin Aguirre plans to offer other celebrity-centric courses.
“For this semester, we are trying to introduce a series of courses that focus on celebrity studies but as experienced and defined in the Philippines. The first one of those would be focused on Taylor Swift because we recognize the importance of the activities of the fandom of Taylor Swift in the Philippines and globally,” he said.
A study of Filipino boy group SB19 is also part of the series.
