Yale University is diving into pop culture next year with a course dedicated entirely to Beyoncé—who, with a staggering 99 Grammy nominations, stands among the music industry’s most awarded and controversial figures. The class, titled “Beyoncé Makes History: Black Radical Tradition, Culture, Theory & Politics Through Music,” is designed to explore the intersection of her music with social and political ideologies. However, in light of the nation’s challenges and concerns, the class raises questions about academia’s priorities.
The course will be led by Professor Daphne Brooks of Yale’s African American Studies department, who claims that Beyoncé’s work serves as a gateway into deeper subjects like Black intellectual traditions and political movements. The curriculum will reportedly span Beyoncé’s music from her 2013 self-titled album to her recent work, “Cowboy Carter,” interpreting the pop star’s lyrics, performances, and public statements as expressions of grassroots political ideas. Brooks describes the class as a way for students to explore Beyoncé’s influence within what she calls the “Black radical intellectual tradition.”
Brooks plans to use her music to connect students with prominent Black thinkers such as Frederick Douglass and Toni Morrison, using Beyoncé’s lyrics as a medium for discussing everything from racial dynamics to gender and sexuality within American history. Brooks claims that Beyoncé’s artistry helps raise awareness for movements like Black Lives Matter and asserts that Beyoncé has “spectacularly elevated engagement” with political and social ideologies.
While other musicians have occasionally made their way into college curricula, most have not achieved the kind of academic veneration that Beyoncé appears to command here. Other universities have launched classes centered on Bob Dylan or Taylor Swift, but their courses usually use the stars’ works as supplementary cultural artifacts—not entire courses revolving around interpreting and exalting the artists’ intentions. For Brooks, though, Beyoncé stands alone as an artist who creates an “archive of historical memory,” something Brooks argues students must learn to understand.
This course is not Professor Brooks’ first academic endeavor featuring Beyoncé. At Princeton, she previously taught a class on Black women in popular music, finding that Beyoncé was the part students most wanted to discuss. Given Yale’s student body’s enthusiasm for anything Beyoncé-related, Brooks anticipates high demand for her new course. However, she hopes to keep the class size small, making it an exclusive study experience.
One might wonder if this emphasis on pop culture in the classroom is a beneficial academic exercise or a trend that reflects a broader shift in academia. American students face record-high debt, and debates about the value of certain degrees rage on—yet courses like these appear more frequently, stirring both enthusiasm and skepticism.
And while Professor Brooks won’t be arranging any Beyoncé appearances, she jokes that she’d take the students to a concert if she could. Students attending Yale’s Beyoncé course may feel closer to their cultural icon but are unlikely to get any face time with Queen Bey herself.
For now, the course at Yale is another example of how pop culture increasingly overlaps with academia, whether or not taxpayers and students paying hefty tuition rates agree with the focus on celebrity instead of broader, classical subjects that once defined elite institutions. Yale’s class may raise questions about the current trajectory of higher education, where cultural studies often take precedence over core academic subjects, but the course on Beyoncé seems certain to sell out regardless.
