Past Institutes

Taylor Swift in the Literature Classroom (Summer 2024 Webinar)

 
On July 8, 2024, Humanities Texas held a webinar for English language arts (ELA) teachers comparing the work of one of today's most recognizable songwriters and performers, Taylor Swift, and commonly taught poetic texts and traditions in the secondary-level curriculum.

Curriculum

Content was aligned with the TEKS. This program for English language arts teachers compared the work of one of today's most recognizable songwriters and performers, Taylor Swift, and commonly taught poetic texts and traditions (lyric, dramatic, and narrative) in the secondary-level curriculum. The program provided strategies for finding ways to engage middle and high school students by showing how this pop-music icon uses traditional genres, motifs, and figures found in literary texts that seem remote from hers. Participants also investigated the ways in which Swift uses fairly familiar middle and high school texts as the basis or reference points for some of her writing. Teachers were encouraged to share ideas with others hoping to incorporate Swift into their classroom instruction.

Like all Humanities Texas teacher programs, the webinar emphasized close interaction with scholars, the examination of texts, and the development of effective pedagogical strategies and engaging assignments and activities.

Faculty

Elizabeth Scala of The University of Texas at Austin led the webinar.

Schedule

The webinars took place over Zoom on March 20 and 27, 2024. The schedule is available here.

No Recording

As a reminder to any interested teachers, there is not a recording for this webinar available; the program was only available to teachers present in the webinar.

Sponsors

The webinar is made possible with major funding from the State of Texas with ongoing support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.