Beyonce Will Be The Focus Of A New Class At Yale

Beyonce will be the focus of a new class at Yale University taught by professor Daphne Brooks. Brooks recently spoke about the offering during an interview with the school’s Daily News, revealing it will “examine Beyoncé’s artistic work from 2013 to 2024 as a lens to study Black history, intellectual thought and performance.” The title of the course is: “Beyonce Makes History: Black Radical Tradition History, Culture, Theory & Politics Through Music.”

“[This class] seemed good to teach because [Beyoncé] is just so ripe for teaching at this moment in time,” she told the outlet. “The number of breakthroughs and innovations she’s executed and the way she’s interwoven history and politics and really granular engagements with Black cultural life into her performance aesthetics and her utilization of her voice as a portal to think about history and politics — there’s just no one like her.” Brooks previously taught a class on Beyonce at Princeton University, but that course focused on her cultural impact.

Beyonce isn’t the first singer to become the focus of a university course. In recent years Kendrick Lamar and his album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, were the subject of a class at Georgia Regents University a few years ago, while other colleges have hosted courses on JAY-Z, Bruce Springsteen, Drake, The Weeknd, and 2Pac, among other artists.

The Yale course comes just months after the release of Beyonce’s eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter, on which she ventured into country music. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, with 407,000 album-equivalent units. It’s the second project in a trilogy, following 2022’s Renaissance. Details on her third project in the group have yet to be announced. Be on the lookout for further updates on Beyonce on HotNewHipHop.