A new course about Harry Styles is being offered at Texas State University

65th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles
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Tina Campbell19 July 2022
The Weekender

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A university in the US has announced plans to introduce a new course about singer Harry Styles in spring 2023.

Associate professor of digital history at Texas State University, Louie Dean Valencia, revealed on Twitter that the course will be called “Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity: Identity, the Internet, and European Pop Culture”.

According to Professor Valencia’s announcement, the class will focus on the former One Direction star 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.”

The coursework will count towards studies in European or world history, international studies, pop culture, diversity and women’s and gender studies.

Valencia elaborated further on the syllabus during an interview with local TV station KXAN.

He said: “The way I like to describe the class is that it’s really about the history of the last 12 years or so. So, it is about Harry Styles in the same way that some classes are about the Beatles and you might take a class like that to learn about, ‘What were the ‘60s like?’”

“This class will give you an idea of questions around globalism, issues around gender, sexuality, race, and really trying to kind of peel apart how did we become a part of the world that we’re living in today?”

Adding: “As a 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.”

Harry Styles (second far right) originally shot to fame as a member of boyband One Direction on UK talent show The X Factor in 2010
Getty Images

Styles isn’t the first musician to get an entire course dedicated to his career.

Earlier this year, New York University’s Clive Davis Institute offered a special course on Taylor Swift.

Taught by Rolling Stone journalist Brittany Spanos, it aimed to explore Swift’s “evolution as a creative music entrepreneur, the legacy of pop and country songwriters, discourses of youth and girlhood, and the politics of race in contemporary popular music”.

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