Beyoncé Is Now the Subject of a College Course: Awesome or Awful?

From Lady Gaga to Occupy Wall Street, "The Simpsons" to "Harry Potter," the subjects of college courses are getting more and more interesting these days. Kevin Allred, a Ph.D student and lecturer at Rutgers University’s Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, will be teaching a course titled “Feminist Perspectives: Politicizing Beyoncé.”


“This isn’t a course about Beyoncé’s political engagement or how many times she performed during President Obama’s inauguration weekend,” said Allred.

Instead, the class will use Beyoncé’s music, videos, and career to explore issues of race, gender, and sexual politics. Some subtopics they will discuss include “the extent of Beyoncé’s control over her own aesthetic, whether her often half-naked body is empowered or stereotypical, and her more racy performances as her alter ego, ‘Sasha Fierce.’” The students will also be assigned readings from black feminists such as Alice Walker, Sojourner Truth, and bell hooks.

While Allred is certainly not the first to structure a course around a celebrity (Georgetown University offers a course on Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z), he has met his fair share of criticism. Some question the intellectual relevance of studying pop stars. Others feel that Beyoncé doesn’t deserve to be compared to the likes of Walker and hooks.

What do you think about making Beyoncé the subject of a college course? Is it awesome or awful?