Every now and then, a story about a musician-focused college course emerges, like last year with Drake and The Weeknd, or earlier this year with Taylor Swift. Now, another pop icon is getting his own class, and this time, it’s Harry Styles.
In Spring 2023, Louie Dean Valencia, Associate Professor of Digital History at Texas State University, will teach a course titled “Harry Styles And The Cult Of Celebrity: Identity, The Internet, And European Pop Culture.” The course description reads, “This course focuses on British musician Harry Styles and popular European culture to understand the cultural and political development of the modern celebrity as related to questions of gender and sexuality, race, class, nation and globalism, media, fashion, fan culture, internet culture, and consumerism.”
It’s official, official. I’m teaching the world’s first ever university course on the work of #HarryStyles is happening Spring 2023 at @TXST University (see description).
This is what tenure looks like. Let’s gooooo!
pic.twitter.com/1z3vMZoxRV
— Louie Dean Valencia (@BurntCitrus) July 16, 2022
Valencia told KXAN Austin, “As an historian, I want the class to get to really see how the world has changed in the last 12 years or so, but also how to put that into historical context, through the lens of Harry Styles, and how they can learn from him and his art, activism and philosophy, like any great artist.”
He also said his proposal for the class was 23 pages long and was looked over by a panel of professors before the university approved it.
KXAN notes, “Assignments for the class will include studying [Styles’] music, films and with readings from Murakami, Bethan Roberts, Susan Sontag, Charles Bukowski, Rumi, Alain de Botton, Richard Brautigan and more. Students will also have to create their own podcast.”