For Some Professors, Taylor Swift Is a Student-Engagement Tactic
Elizabeth Scala was having trouble, trouble, trouble. It was 2021, in the middle of the pandemic. Scala, a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, had tried several themes, including the Harry Potter series, to engage students in a course she’s been teaching for years, a freshman honors seminar focused on critical reading and analysis. But things weren’t clicking. Then Taylor Swift took the course to places it’d never been.