You must be joking?
I am not. It's a class dissecting her songs and albums, relating it to how she impacted the economy, social media, among other things. It's an expansion of Stads kids' PowerPoint presentation on Swifts 1989 album.
Doesn't surprise me as there also was a TuPac class that did the same thing with his lyrics.
Also, I attended a presentation by Mariusz Kodak, who played with Trans-Siberian Orchestra as a violinist. It was on Progessive Metal and how it effects body movement. It was an amazing presentation, with song samples from Tesseract, Periphery, Animals as Leaders, and Dream Theater. This was extra credit for my Song Ethnography class.
Honestly, you can study music to discover a lot about a culture. And Taylor Swift is one that you can use to show a lot. An example is her impact on people and how as a pop artist, she can influence certain aspects of US culture. Which is using your soapbox and platform to project your opinions on matters of interest. Such as Bruce using his to say to the "Metal heads" that pop is inferior and won't stand the test of time, because it's mainly manufactured. But why does Taylor Swift have such an impact on people? That is one question you could ask and find out in the Taylor Swift class.
And also....DragonForce covered 'Wildest Dreams' in Power Metal style and the crowd loved it. Funny thing is my brothers kids went to that show just to see DragonForce, but also they don't really like Taylor Swift.
Believe me, if these pop songs were in a different style and genre, a lot of people would enjoy them.