Beyoncé‘s artistic work, specifically from 2013 to 2024, will be the focus of a new class at Yale. Beyoncé Makes History: Black Radical Tradition History, Culture, Theory & Politics through Music will be taught by Daphne Brooks, professor of African American studies and music, as a byproduct of her class at Princeton University, Black Women in Popular Music Culture.
“Those classes were always overenrolled,” Brooks told Yale Daily News. “I always thought I should come back to focusing on her and centering her work pedagogically at some point.”
The new course will focus on Beyoncé’s latter works, starting with her self-titled album.
“2013 was really such a watershed moment in which she articulated her beliefs in Black feminism,” Brooks said. “[In ‘Flawless’], it was the first time a pop artist had used sound bites from a Black feminist like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It became more about ‘We are going to produce club bangers that are also galvanizing our ability to think radically about the state of liberation.'”
Brooks said the election and Beyoncé’s continuous Album of the Year Grammy snubs were incentives to do the course.
“Black women are sometimes completely marginalized from some of the highest accolades and are so rarely taken seriously as musicians who are capable of and worthy of recognition for serious monumental work,” she said.
“Other artists have not [embraced] intersectional political and historical work like Beyoncé has,” Brooks added. “And that’s not to pit them against each other; it’s just to make a point about what institutions choose to value and what they often disregard, and it’s often people of color and especially women of color’s artistic achievements. So that’s why this class needed to happen right now.”
The new Bey course starts at Yale next semester.
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