Kevin Allred, a PhD student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, is teaching a topics course called Politicizing Beyoncé. The course focuses on pop star Beyoncé Knowles’ career as part of the school’s women’s and gender studies department. The Charlatan’s Tatiana von Recklinghausen spoke with Allred about Beyoncé’s influence on women, why she’s relevant and keeping students engaged in their learning with pop culture.
The Charlatan (TC): What inspired the idea for the course?
Kevin Allred (KA): Well, I’ve always used Beyoncé and other kinds of pop culture figures in my other teaching, like in Women’s Studies 101 that I’ve taught a bunch. I’ve used her to talk about different racial and gender issues. I did find an article by Daphne Brooks; she wrote a review of Beyoncé’s B’Day album and she kind of analyzed some of the songs in relations to Hurricane Katrina and trying to make an argument for looking at B’Day as a response to Hurricane Katrina and how that might make Beyoncé a more politically subversive artist than we recognize her.
So . . . I would use the article in my 101 classes and it always got a lot of talking and it got positive and negative reviews on it, and so it kind of just stemmed from there. I was asked to teach a special topics class and I was able to create whatever I wanted to teach for the class under the heading of feminist perspective. So that’s when I was like, “OK, I can really space this out. We can take a song a day or a couple songs a day and pair it up with a reading and really get into these issues.” I mean, I didn’t know how it would work at first. I was interested in seeing if we could talk about these issues that we talk about in gender studies classes, but can we use Beyoncé as a way to get at the issues to engage the students in a fun way.
TC: Do you think it’s important to study other pop stars as well in order to understand the modern political world, or just Beyoncé?
KA: I don’t think it’s just Beyoncé. I chose her because I had a particular interest in race, gender, and sexuality, and I think that she addresses that in a very interesting way. I think that it could be done with a lot of different pop stars, just because the students today are so kind of immersed in pop culture more than before. I think it’s just so pervasive in our society. I just think the students are changing in ways that teachers need to be aware of and adapt to as well. Things are so fast now-a-days. Everybody’s on their cell phones, Facebook, and their Twitter, and you can basically get any kind of information you want within 20 seconds or 30 seconds.
Now you can just ask your iPhone with your voice . . . that sort of thing gives you the answer to your question. Things are just so fast paced, that using pop stars or other pop culture movie stars . . . that students recognize and can engage with, it just makes it an easier way to learn now, and it just makes it easier . . . to get students in the classroom, to get them engaged, to see that these issues do pertain to their lives, that they see and read here every day. I think it could be done with a number of people, different musicians, movie stars, anyone. And I think it’s a new interesting way to teach and get students engaged.
TC: Do you think Beyoncé is beneficial or problematic for women from a feminist perspective?
KA: I try and go against the grain, and you know if she were wearing not much at all, rather than thinking about how this is another sexualized image of women I would push students in class and say how can we think of this along the lines of some other readings about black female bodies historically, and is she doing anything different. Is she recalling the images and do we see anything subversive? Personally, I like to push that angle. I definitely know that a lot of people would say there are negative aspects of her too, which I’m sure there certainly are, but I choose when teaching these things to look beyond that, and see what else we can see under the surface that might be a bit more challenging, or, to me, a little bit more interesting. And she does have a traditionally feminist girl power. She’s got feminist anthems that she sings, she’s got an all-girl band. So on that level, she’s definitely a positive role model for women and something to look at in women’s studies, too. It can go both ways but I choose to push students further than just that surface and see what other messages we might be able to find.
TC: Aside from studying Beyoncé, what are some of the other materials you’ve tied into the course?
KA: We have a lot of readings by black feminists historically. We’ve read all the way back to Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, bell hooks, a lot of writings about black women’s bodies throughout American history. There was some other music as well by Rihanna, Janelle Monáe, and other black female artists, so it’s not just Beyoncé.
TC: How does studying current pop stars help students understand these more complicated concepts?
KA: I don’t know if it ends up being a better understanding. I think it speaks to students today and helps engage concepts that they might find, “Oh this is old and boring. I don’t want to talk about this in class again.” So it provides this catalyst to be able to get the students talking about an old concept in a new way, where they might otherwise just dismiss it because it’s old and stuffy, and no longer relevant.
TC: Was there any resistance when the course was being created?
KA: There has been now that the story’s come out about it. But like I said before, I was teaching a topics course, so I didn’t have to go through traditional kind of steps that you go through to get a university course approved because it’s taught under the heading of the feminist perspectives topics class. I was able to come up with it myself. The undergraduate director told me you could use your Beyoncé stuff to create a whole class about it, so I went with that and there was no real resistance at all. But now with all these stories I’m reading a lot of peoples saying, ‘Oh this is a waste of time, what a waste of money. I can’t believe students are sitting through this and our tax dollars are paying for this kind of education.’
TC: How many students are enrolled in the class?
KA: There are [around] 25. The course materials didn’t publicize that it was going to be a class just about Beyoncé. They didn’t publish that title for it so students didn’t actually know until the first day of class that, that’s what we were doing. So I would anticipate that the next time it gets taught that’s it’s going to be publicized this way.
TC: Do you feel that by studying a public figure students were more engaged in the class?
KA: I do feel they were more engaged. [They were] more excited to come to come to class, and get started on a discussion, and they would bring a lot of outside ideas that would relate to the topic for the day more so than in other classes that I taught. I taught . . . by watching a music video each day or at least listening to a song, and it gave us all this common ground to start the discussion on and analyze what was happening in the video . . . I don’t know if it was the Beyoncé or just kind of the fun of . . . listening to music in class or as homework, or what it was, but I do feel like the students were more engaged.
