Beyoncé fans at the University of Victoria (UVic) have the chance to learn more than just the pop singer’s lyrics starting this September.
This fall, the school is introducing a new musicology course dedicated to the work of Queen Bey.
The interdisciplinary course will be taught by Melissa Avdeeff, a popular music scholar who has given academic lectures on Justin Bieber, A Tribe Called Red, and Buzzfeed.
It will examine the pop singer’s career trajectory, whether she can be considered a feminist, and the role of female sexuality in pop music, according to the course description on UVic’s music department website.
“We’ll look at a variety of different aspects like video analysis, issues of authenticity . . . her [role] as a black feminist woman, as well as how that relates to her image and her branding,” Avdeeff said.
Students will also explore the role of sexuality in pop music, and whether Beyoncé’s sexualization of herself is positive or negative.
Avdeeff said she thinks Beyoncé’s prominence in the last 15 years of popular music history will help draw students to the course.
In fact, the course has been so popular that its enrolment cap had to be raised from 70 to 100, Avdeeff said.
The course has also received positive feedback via the Twitter account that has been set up for the course, she said.
The UVic course is not the first of its kind to use Beyoncé as a case study for issues in popular music culture.
Kevin Allred, a lecturer in Rutgers University’s department of women’s and gender studies, has been teaching a course on Beyoncé since 2010.
Called “Politicising Beyoncé” the class compares Beyoncé’s music to writings on black feminism in the U.S., Allred said.
“She’s kind of the most prominent black woman in pop culture, certainly, but in everything else almost as well,” he said.
For those wondering if a course dedicated to Queen Bey could ever make its way to Carleton University, professor William Echard, who teaches a music class called “Issues in the Study of Popular Music,” said it wouldn’t be out of the question.
Popular music courses have been offered at Carleton since the 1980s, he said.
While the UVic course has earned lots of buzz, not everybody is enthusiastic about the idea of dedicating an entire course to the pop star.
Carleton student Nick Gerada said he doesn’t think students will learn much more than what they already know about the singer.
“She’s successful, don’t get me wrong,” Gerada said.
“But not as successful as a lot more people have been before her and after her,” he said.
It seems though that fandom has already won over students at both Rutgers and UVic.
Allred was lucky enough to take some of his students to Beyoncé’s recent On the Run Tour concert after Beyoncé’s publicist arranged for him to get tickets.
“Later today in class we’ll be talking about it, hopefully, if I could get them to calm down and analyze, versus just saying what their favourite parts were,” Allred said.
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