by Kandiss Edwards

November 8, 2024

Yale will offer a course focused on Beyoncé’s cultural contributions in 2025.

---

Yale University will offer a course, “Beyoncé Makes History: History, Culture, Theory, and Politics of the Black Radical Tradition Through Music,” Spring 2025.

The course, developed by Daphne Brooks, professor of African American studies, will examine Beyoncé’s cultural and political contributions. Brooks’ emphasis on American Requiem singer is a byproduct of a previous course she taught at Princeton University. The objective of this program: “Black women in popular musical culture”.

“Those classes were always overcrowded,” Brooks said the Yale Daily News. “And there was so much energy around the focus on Beyoncé, even though it was a course that began in the late 19th century and continues to the present day. I always thought I would have to go back to focusing on her and centering her work in an educational way at some point.

Beyoncé’s most recent work, Cowboy Carterexamines the evolution of black music throughout American history. The singer plays genres, like country and folk music, which originated in the black community but are now common. The evolution of pop music toward his later more focused and intentional albums, infused with social commentary, allows Brooks to examine “American culture, popular culture, and global culture of the past two decades.”

“I hope that whatever discipline you study in the liberal arts at Yale,” Brooks said, “looking at culture through Beyoncé can invite us to think about the extent to which art can articulate the world we live in and nourish our minds and give us the space to imagine better worlds and the ethics of freedom.

While the Yale course focuses on the global star’s evolution toward enlightenment, feminism, and liberation, universities approach celebrities from a different perspective.

Georgia State University’s law class, “The Life of Issa Rae,” focuses on the deals that helped shape Rae’s rise in entertainment. .

Rae’s Rise from Production to YouTube Star Awkward black girl at HBO Precarious required the negotiation of several contracts, examined with an attentive eye. Analyzing the intersection of art, business and legality is just as important as examining culture and political impact.

RELATED CONTENT: Beyoncé pays tribute to her great-grandfather with new SirDavis whiskey