Bow down, students: Queen Bey enters the ivory tower

This summer, some Rutgers University students can spend their nights in the library watching Beyoncé music videos without any guilt.

Kevin Allred, a Ph.D candidate and part-time lecturer for the women’s and gender studies program at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., is offering a course this summer called The Politics of Beyoncé.

Don’t let the name fool you. The students won’t be studying whether or not “Beyoncé for President, 2016” could become a reality, but will instead use the international star as a focus point to analyze the history of black women in the United States and the history of black feminism.

“All the songs [Beyoncé] puts out — when examined in their historical context and applied to situations in different ways — produce really interesting and political results,” Allred said.

Frayda Cohen, a lecturer and undergraduate adviser for Pitt’s women’s studies program, said studying pop culture brings education down from its ivory tower and into everyday life.

“It’s an important goal of a liberal arts education to think critically about the society that [students] live in,” Cohen said. “Pop culture and, maybe, Beyoncé can be an important aspect for this to happen.” 

Allred said his students will study writings from famous black feminists such as bell hooks and Alice Walker to see how Beyoncé’s music corresponds — or does not correspond — to black feminist messages.

A typical day in the class consists of an analysis of different concepts or political statements in Beyoncé’s music videos, according to Allred.

“I chose Beyoncé because she has so much power and control over her career and narrative,” he said. “She makes the choices and is in charge of the whole thing. That way, we can talk about intentionality as being directly linked to Beyoncé herself.”

Lately Beyoncé’s choices have stirred up the water in feminism’s third wave.

The artist sampled “We should all be feminists,” a speech from feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk in 2012, in her song “***Flawless.”

The portion of Adichie’s speech used in the song says girls are taught to shrink themselves, limit their ambition and aspire to marriage. Adichie says girls are taught not to be sexual beings and defines a feminist as “the person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.”

Beyoncé appears to make no effort toward inhibiting her sexuality. Beyoncé’s official YouTube channel lists the music video for her song, “Partition,” as explicit content. She also embraced her “Bootylicious” body back when she was a member of Destiny’s Child.

Allred said “***Flawless” will “absolutely” be included on his syllabus and is a main part of one of his presentations, “I woke up like dis: The Feminist Politics of Black Female Subjectivity in Beyoncé.”

Allred called the song a shot against consumerism and the music industry “by going against the grain and determining what she wanted in her song, damn the consequences.”

Although she’s the subject of a feminist politics course, Beyoncé told British Vogue that she thinks the word feminist “can be very extreme.”

Still, Beyoncé identified herself as a “modern-day feminist” and said, “I do believe in equality,” but added, “Why do you have to choose what type of woman you are? Why do you have to label yourself anything? I’m just a woman, and I love being a woman.”

While there is discussion about whether Beyoncé is truly a feminist, Julie Beaulieu, a lecturer in Pitt’s women’s studies program, said she is not interested in this question as a “yes” or “no” answer.

“The question invites us to consider what it means to be a feminist and why other pop icons refuse to name themselves as such,” Beaulieu said.

Allred said many of his students became interested in gender issues and feminism because of Beyoncé’s surprise self-titled visual album that was available on iTunes in December 2013 without marketing it before release.

Allred currently teaches The Politics of Beyoncé as a departmental special topics class, which does not require him to go through the University’s administration. Allred said he would have difficulty getting administration to approve the course as a stand-alone topic.

Allred added that the amount of press the course has received lately would give him leverage.

Sydney Garlick, a junior majoring in psychology and pursuing a certificate in women’s studies, said she would definitely take a course focused on Beyoncé because “as a woman of color, it is empowering to see her as a role model.”

“I think there are so many different focuses in courses that I don’t think it is strange to have a pop icon as one,” Garlick said. “I think it’s being more aware of the interaction between society and students and what is going on with the world.”

Cohen said Pitt already has courses that she feels are in a similar vein as Allred’s course.

Cohen teaches Sex, Race and Popular Culture, in which she said her class uses hip-hop artist Jay-Z, who is married to Beyoncé, to spur discussion on theoretical ideas on deviance and social society.

“The big goal is to start thinking critically about the society you live in,” Cohen said.

Beaulieu said there is a tremendous amount of scholarship on pop culture, and she is not surprised that Beyoncé is an object of study.

“Beyoncé invites questions about feminism, capitalism, female empowerment, race and sexuality, among other topics, and these questions aren’t always easy to answer,” she said.