The next year, Texas State University will introduce a Harry Styles course that claims to go much beyond a superficial study of the musician’s career.
Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity: Identity, the Internet, and European Pop Culture will be the topic of an Honors College course that Louie Dean Valencia, associate professor of digital history at Texas State, will be instructing in the spring of 2023.
Styles is discussed in further detail in the flyer, including how he contributes to the “cultural and political development of the modern celebrity as related to questions of gender and sexuality, race, class, nation, and globalism, media, fashion, fan culture, internet culture, and consumerism.”
The SYSCA Daily interviewed Valencia about the steps he took to propose the course, beginning with his love of Harry Styles and One Direction, which he credits with helping him get through graduate school in New York City. Considering “the world that influences him—music, film, literature—and how he influences the world” were two things he claimed the pandemic had led him to consider.
“In short, as an historian, I want the class to get to really see how the world has changed in the last 12 years or so, but also how to put that into historical context, through the lens of Harry Styles—and how they can learn from him and his art, activism, and philosophy, like any great artist,” Valencia explained.
It's official, official. I'm teaching the world's first ever university course on the work of #HarryStyles is happening Spring 2023 at @TXST University (see description).
This is what tenure looks like. Let's gooooo! 😊 pic.twitter.com/1z3vMZoxRV
— Louie Dean Valencia (@BurntCitrus) July 16, 2022