NYU Is Offering Students a Course on Lana Del Rey
Beginning in October, students at New York University's Clive Davis Institute in New York City will be able to get a crash course on all things Lana Del Rey.
Centered on Del Rey's music and career, the new course will be taught by journalist and author Kathy Iandoli. "Topics in Recorded Music: Lana Del Rey" will run from Oct. 20 to Dec. 8.
The two-credit course will examine the 37-year-old singer's contributions to pop music, her relationship to feminism, her musical influences and other singers she has influenced, according to Variety.
Students will also study her connection to social justice movements including #BlackLlivesMatter, #MeToo and #TimesUp.
An official course description reads:
Over the course of eight critically-acclaimed albums, the six-time Grammy nominated artist has introduced a sad core, melancholic, and baroque version of dream pop that in turn helped shift and reinvent the sound (and mood) of mainstream music beyond the 2010s. Through her arresting visuals and her thematic attention to mental health and tales of toxic, damaged love, Del Rey provided a new platform for artists of all genders to create "anti-pop" works of substance that could live in a mainstream once categorized as bubblegum.
"In so many ways, I feel like Lana Del Rey is both a blueprint and a cautionary tale, a complicated pop star who resonates so much with her fans, not because of how she makes them feel about her, but rather how she makes them feel about themselves," Iandoli told Variety.
The journalist added Del Rey "has changed the parameters of baroque pop and now more specifically 'sad girl pop' through her music, by expanding the subject matter which at times is controversial and challenging."
The "Summertime Sadness" singer isn't the first pop star NYU has offered a course on.
Earlier this year, the university offered a college course centered on music star Taylor Swift.
The course was taught by NYU alum Brittany Spanos and ran from Jan. 26 to Mar. 9. The class covered "Swift’s evolution as a creative music entrepreneur, the legacy of pop and country songwriters, discourses of youth and girlhood, and the politics of race in contemporary popular music."