The University of Waterloo is the latest school to offer a course centred on pop star Beyoncé.
Drama 282 Gender and Performance is being offered by the Department of Drama and Speech Communication for the fall semester, and the class largely focuses on Beyoncé’s 2013 self-titled album.
Taught by Waterloo professor Naila Kelata-Mae, the class will use feminist and race theory to analyze and discuss social elements of Beyoncé’s work and performances, along with her influence on pop culture and society, according to Kelata-Mae.
Beyoncé has self-identified as a feminist, and though some have questioned if she really falls under the label, Kelata-Mae said feminism is for anyone who wants to claim the title, and it is not up to her or anyone else to determine who gets to call themselves one.
“What the feminist movement has long fought for was the notion that women . . . could all be complex, contradictory human beings that could express ourselves however we wanted to express ourselves,” she said. She added if people question others who identify as feminists, they should examine their own constructs of what gender and feminism should be.
Though the star’s influence and accomplishments are immense, Kelata-Mae cautioned against looking up to Beyoncé or other performers as role models. She said people need to remember Beyoncé is a performer, and everything we know of her through her website or Instagram is a performance, which she shares with us.
Waterloo follows the lead of the University of Victoria (UVic), which offered a musicology course about the star last year. Multiple American universities have also offered courses about her.
Melissa Avdeeff, the professor at UVic who taught the course on Beyoncé last fall, said the pop star provides a lot of material for academic analysis.
“Her career has been quite long and varied for her young age, and she has made an indelible mark on society and the music industry,” Avdeeff said. “I think to answer that question, we’d also have to question why Beyoncé is so popular in the first place.”
Avdeeff said her course has been immensely popular and will run again this fall.
“Beyoncé’s performing femaleness and motherhood and she’s performing heterosexual marriage, but these are all performances,” Kelata-Mae said, “And part of the sophistication of Beyoncé’s performance over the past 20 years is that there’s a way in which many people who are familiar with her work believe that they are familiar with her.”
Kelata-Mae said despite Beyoncé’s emphasis on her music, she is politically active on the side, working with Michelle Obama on a series of projects and marching with her husband Jay-Z to protest the Trayvon Martin murder.
She said comparing their activist credentials in comparison to people like Hillary Clinton is difficult.
“They’re completely different. Hillary Clinton is a politician and Beyoncé is a performer. I think there are ways in which they are incomparable because their professions are radically different. And so their audiences are different, and their aims and goals are different,” Kelata-Mae said.
Shirvonne Royer, a fourth-year integrated science student at Carleton, said she would take a course on Beyoncé if she had more electives available because she likes courses that incorporate “something modern [she] can relate to.”
Third-year Carleton communications student Nilanjana Ray said she would take the course because she thinks it would be a fun story to tell people.
“I have a feeling a lot of feminist issues would be covered, and feminism plus Queen Bey happen to be two of my favourite things to discuss,” she said.
Kelata-Mae said the response to the course has been extraordinary and expectations for enrolment in the fall are high.
