GLOBAL pop Icon Taylor Swift is set to be the center of discussion among students of University of the Philippines, which will offer a course about the American singer and songwriter.

In a report by Philstar.com, UP College of Mass Communication faculty member Dr. Cherish Aileen Brillon said the course about Swift will be an elective under the BA Broadcast Media and Studies in the second semester of the Academic Year 2023-2024.

“I think it’s time for us here in the Philippines to look at her in an in-depth manner,” Brillon said in the report.

“Because our discipline is media studies, we opted to look at her from what we call the lens of celebrity studies. The intention of the course is to use Taylor Swift as an example para ma-explain ‘yung relation natin ng public hindi lang ng fans, the way that the public looks at her pati ‘yung media,” Brillon also said in an interview with ABS-CBN News.

The course will focus mainly on the conception, construction, and performance of the 34-year-old music idol as a celebrity and her story can be used in class when it comes to media’s relationship with class, politics, gender, race, and success and mobility.

Brillon, a self-confessed ‘Swiftie’ and who will teach the subject, said unlike schools abroad dissecting the artist through literary and business, the subject will delve on how the artist was used as an icon of and fandom activism.

Courses about Swift is nothing new as schools like Stanford University, New York University, and Harvard, among others, have also offered courses about the artist.

The Philippines has been Swift’s biggest market.

In 2022, Quezon City ranked as one of the artists’ top listeners at no. 5 behind cities like London, New York, Sydney, and Melbourne.

UP Department of Broadcast Communication chair Prof. Alwin Aguirre also said the course on Swift is one of the many courses about celebrities as Pinoy pop Group ‘SB19’ is also set to be studied.