{"id":11989,"date":"2025-08-07T16:15:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T16:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/?p=11989"},"modified":"2026-03-26T21:05:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T21:05:41","slug":"the-genius-of-taylor-swift-a-crash-course-on-the-pop-superstar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/the-genius-of-taylor-swift-a-crash-course-on-the-pop-superstar\/","title":{"rendered":"The Genius of Taylor Swift: A Crash Course on the Pop Superstar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Stephanie Burt, Harvard University <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Watch a recording of the lecture on our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/live\/3APaGNjkPqI?si=pPSSgssPBIluqUfa\">YouTube<\/a> channel. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harvard professor and poetry expert Stephanie Burt joins us to explain the artistry \u2014 and the celebrity \u2014 of Taylor Swift. Through heartfelt critical appreciation, Burt analyzes Swift, her body of work, and the community that her art has fostered. Drawing from her popular 2024 Harvard course, Taylor Swift and Her World, as well as from her years as a Swiftie, Burt examines Swift\u2019s particular form of genius \u2014 not the destructive genius of tortured poets, but the collaborative and joyful genius of an artist who has mastered her craft. Tracing a path through the Eras, Burt\u2019s newest work, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hachettebookgroup.com\/titles\/stephanie-burt\/taylors-version\/9781541606234\/?lens=basic-books\">Taylor\u2019s Version<\/a><\/em>, shows what Swift has created, how it works, and why her songs will endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stephanie Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor with nine published books, including two critical books on poetry and three poetry collections. Her essay collection <em>Close Calls with Nonsense<\/em> was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other works include <em>We Are Mermaids<\/em>; <em>Advice from the Lights<\/em>; <em>The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them;<\/em> <em>The Art of the Sonnet; Something Understood: Essays and Poetry for Helen Vendler; The Forms of Youth: Adolescence and 20th Century Poetry; Parallel Play: Poems; Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden;<\/em> and<em> Randall Jarrell and His Age<\/em>. Her writing has appeared in the <em>New York Times<\/em> Book Review, the <em>London Review of Books<\/em>, the <em>Times Literary Supplement<\/em>, <em>The Believer<\/em>, and the <em>Boston Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Stephanie Burt<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4099,"featured_media":11990,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[295],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popular-fall-past"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4099"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11989"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12218,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11989\/revisions\/12218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}