Yale University will offer a new course on Beyoncé Knowles and her influence on global music to students starting in 2025. The class is titled “Beyoncé Makes History: Black Tradition, Culture, Theory, and Radical Politics Through Music.”
Inspiring students
The musical career and influence of singer Beyoncé (44) on popular culture will become the subject of teaching at Yale University in 2025. The class, taught by Professor Daphne Brooks, majoring in African American Studies, will focus on the singer's development from 2013 to the album Cowboy Carter in 2024. From there, the singer's perception and participation in social and political ideologies will be analyzed.
Brooks plans to use Beyoncé’s music catalog and live performances to guide students through the history of black intellectuals, from abolitionist Frederic Douglass to Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. Students will be exposed to performances from Beyoncé, including concert footage, to deepen their understanding of black culture. With her new class at Yale, she hopes the subject will gain traction.
According to Brooks, singer Beyoncé is in a “different class” when it comes to using her music platform to raise awareness and encourage people to participate in social and political movements such as Black Lives Matter and African-American feminism. She also uses her compositions to tell stories about the racial and gender injustices that the black community has faced for more than 400 years of oppression in the United States, turning many of her songs into historical memories.
In terms of politics, the Guardian noted that Beyoncé rarely gets involved in this field but always attracts attention whenever she participates. She sang at two inaugurations of former President Barack Obama in 2009 and 2013. In 2024, the singer allowed Kamala Harris's presidential campaign to use her song Freedom in their July campaign. She also appeared at Harris's rally calling for votes on October 25 in Texas.
This is not the first time a course on Beyoncé has been taught at a university. In 2017, the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) launched the course "Beyoncé, Gender and Race". Previously, in 2014, Rutgers University (USA) opened the course "Politicizing Beyoncé" at the Department of Gender and Women's Studies. The course also attracted a large number of students. According to the school's website, this class helps explore gender, race... through the lens of Beyoncé's career and reputation.
Professor Daphne Brooks
Shining reputation
Beyoncé is a singer, songwriter, dancer, music producer and actress. Beyoncé's music career has earned the admiration of many. With over 200 million records sold worldwide, Beyoncé is one of the best-selling artists of all time. Throughout her career, the singer has won many awards such as Billboard, MTV, and American Music Awards. At the end of November 2024, Billboard announced Beyoncé as the greatest pop star of the 21st century based on the brilliant career spanning 25 years of the "queen bee" of this century.
She also surpassed the competition to become the artist with the most nominations at the 2025 Grammy Awards with 11 categories for the country-inspired album "Cowboy Carter" and the album "Texas Hold 'Em". With 11 nominations for the album "Cowboy Carter", Beyoncé set a record as the singer with the most nominations in the history of the Grammy Awards. "Cowboy Carter" is an album of 27 songs with a duration of 1 hour and 18 minutes, considered one of the masterpieces of the world music scene in 2024.
* American magazine Forbes published a list of the 100 most powerful stars in the world in 2014 and Beyoncé was the name at number 1. Forbes magazine also honored her twice as the most powerful woman in the world's entertainment industry in 2015 and 2017.
* Always aware of racism and gender inequality in American society, Beyoncé has long included messages reflecting society and inequality between people in her musical works as an extremely strong feminist manifesto.
Source: New York Post
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