LSU offered ENGL 2148 this semester, a class surrounding the connections between Shakespeare’s writing and Taylor Swift. 

Talon Shoemake said that many called his idea for this class “gimmicky” and that he was trying to lure people in with Swift. The main focus of the class was for him to build a general education class the students would want to take and enjoy. 

“I know if I can get them in there, I can get them critically thinking about Shakespeare and literature,” Shoemake said. 

The class is structured thematically, each unit focusing on one of Shakespeare’s plays and Swift’s songs that fall under a specific theme. Their first unit was on “revenge,” and they heavily evaluated “Titus Andronicus.” 

Before the units begin, Shoemake said he gives contextual lectures to clarify subjects like tragedy and how a Shakespearean one differs from a Greek one. 

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During a typical day in class, students will come in after they have listened to the song and read the play. Shoemake said that he gives a brief overview before they start to make sure everyone is on the same page. 

“Shakespeare can be like reading a foreign language, so the summary serves to demystify it and give them a doorway in,” Shoemake said. 

For their “revenge” unit, Shoemake differentiated how revenge was during Shakespeare’s time versus a more modern approach. He said that we have moved on from bodily harm and blood feuds to more contemporary examples, such as revenge porn. 

Shoemake even brought in a sex therapist to talk about the psychological kind of ramifications of revenge porn, and the students were able to take that and compare it to an earlier time period. 

“We’re trying to find continuities and overlap to argue that Shakespeare was a culture maker in the same way that Taylor Swift is,” Shoemake said. “I’m always trying to find a way to keep them engaged.” 

For another assignment, Shoemake put his students in groups and assigned them each a character from “Twelfth Night.” Each group had to build a Facebook for said character and had to write and conduct the page in character. 

“It was a way to meld the writing from the perspective of this early modern character in a very modern digital medium,” Shoemake said. 

Political science junior Hannah Culp found this class through a friend and said that she made sure to schedule it first. Not only is she a huge “Swiftie,” but the course fulfills her humanities credit. 

Culp said that she is a “huge history nerd” and that this class lets her be one. As the smaller class talks about these early topics, she said that they can have proactive conversations about their interpretations of different characters and stories. 

Culp said the class itself is thought-provoking because the conversations in the class are very natural when it comes time to dissect the material. “We’re just appreciating two great writers instead of just Shakespeare,” Culp said.

Shoemake said that he hopes that this class and its style will be able to continue its work. The interest in the class was proven to be high, as it even had a waitlist going into the start of the semester. 

“I think that it’s a difficult balancing act because I don’t think that it’s for everybody,” Shoemake said. “But I think that if people are interested in it, they should continue to do it.”

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