Know so much about Harry Styles, you could major in his music? Fans are now one step closer to learning even more about Styles, as Texas State University’s Honors College is offering a course about the pop star for its Spring 2023 semester.
The class — titled Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity: Identity, the Internet and European Pop Culture — will focus on the 28-year-old’s artistry and “the 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.”
Louie Dean Valencia — associate professor of digital history at Texas State, who will be teaching the course — tweeted the news on Saturday (July 16). “It’s official, official. I’m teaching the world’s first ever university course on the work of #HarryStyles is happening Spring 2023 at @TXST University,” he wrote. “This is what tenure looks like. Let’s gooooo!”
Speaking more on the course with KXAN, Valencia detailed his intentions for the course and said, “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.”
On TikTok, the professor further explained that the class will be taught from an objective standpoint and will not dive into Styles’ personal life. “[The class] is not about anything that is not publicly made about him. Really, the idea of the class is that we’re going to learn about the things he puts out there, and through that lens, learn about his music, his artistry and also hopefully a little bit about ourselves.”
The course will function similarly to a history class and will analyze works from Murakami, Bethan Roberts, Susan Sontag, Charles Bukowski, Rumi, Alain de Botton, Richard Brautigan and more. The Styles-centric class will count toward the Honors Studies, History (European or World), International Studies/European Studies, Popular Culture Studies, Diversity Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies courses at Texas State University.
Styles fans at Texas State University can register for the course when it opens up this fall.
It's official, official. I'm teaching the world's first ever university course on the work of #HarryStyles is happening Spring 2023 at @TXST University (see description).
This is what tenure looks like. Let's gooooo! 😊 pic.twitter.com/1z3vMZoxRV
— Louie Dean Valencia (@BurntCitrus) July 16, 2022
