An academic conference centered around popstar Taylor Swift, fittingly named Tay Day, commenced at the University of Liverpool’s Yoko Ono Lennon Centre. Despite the topic of a single popstar, the conference covered a variety of academic studies dedicated to statistical analysis of Taylor Swift. Topics discussed at the conference included the intersectionality of sexual racism in her music videos and the notion of celebrity criticism as a disguise of misogyny. Also featured was a paper titled ‘She’s Also a Billionaire: The Infinite Horizon of Sociopolitical Criticism on Taylor Swift’. Furthermore, one lecture aimed to reveal the millipede, nannaria swiftae, named after the star.
The meeting of academia and fandom was met with ridicule from critics that deemed the public’s obsession with Swift as too excessive. However, the estimated £18m to £35m that Swift and her fans were bringing to Liverpool’s local economy, proved a significant factor of the lecture hall’s agreeability concerning the conference’s validity.
Beth Thomas and Ava Burcham, fellow researchers, travelled to the concert from Manchester to attend the conference. Thomas expressed her swift fandom as a gradual transition from “cool music” to pop, “I love girly pop, this is amazing.” Meanwhile, Abdallah Alzzam travelled from Jordan to Liverpool to not only attend the conference but to find likeminded fans as he has no friends interested in Taylor Swift’s music.
Conclusively, the academic conference concerning a single popstar might have aroused controversy, but it has set a precedent for fandom’s importance in academics and significant contributions to local economies
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