Queen’s College college students with a Clean Area of their timetables could also be happy to study {that a} first-of-its-kind leisure regulation course can be provided later this yr, centring on popular culture’s favorite Tortured Poet, Taylor Swift.
Swift’s megawatt stardom is already evidenced by her economy-boosting Eras Tour, however her affect additionally continues to be felt within the educational world. Prestigious U.S. universities like Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley are already providing programs on the pop star in disciplines together with English, political science and enterprise. Queen’s College itself provided a course on Swift’s “Literary Legacy” in 2022.
However this newest class guarantees to be the primary Swift-focused regulation course in Canada, in accordance with Mohamed Khimji, an affiliate dean of educational coverage at Queen’s regulation college, who can be educating it come September.
Khimji, a self-described Swiftie and corporate-lawyer-turned-law-professor, stated he’s anticipating heightened scholar curiosity within the class. In an interview with International Information, Khimji talked concerning the course content material and his journey getting the category authorized, all whereas dropping Swift lyrics alongside the way in which.
“I’m anticipating plenty of enthusiasm and I’m actually wanting ahead to it,” he stated. “Taylor Swift would say, ‘I have to relax.’”
Khimji’s announcement of the course coincides with the discharge of Swift’s newest album, The Tortured Poets Division, a 31-song behemoth of a document on heartbreak and grief.
The category, referred to as Regulation (Taylor’s Model), will cowl core ideas in leisure regulation, significantly contract, trademark and copyright regulation, whereas utilizing Swift’s quite a few interactions with the authorized system as case research.
And no, it is not going to be a simple A.
“It’s a severe course,” Khimji states, utilizing “a really modern setting.”
The concept for the category took place whereas Khimji was discussing the pop star’s re-recordings of her first batch of albums with a colleague.
“She requested me, ‘Why did Taylor re-record her first six albums?’ So I began explaining the enterprise and authorized explanation why an artist would possibly wish to do this. And it made me suppose, you realize, my college students can be eager about realizing this as properly,” Khimji defined.
“I began doing a little analysis on Taylor’s different interactions with the authorized system and determined that there was sufficient substance there for a course.”
Swift launched her re-record enterprise after Scooter Braun’s firm Ithaca Holdings purchased her former document label Large Machine Information. Due to the acquisition, Braun now owns the rights to Swift’s music catalogue up till her 2019 album Lover, which was launched by means of Republic Information.
In effort to personal her music once more, Swift has, so far, launched 4 “Taylor’s Model” tasks, re-recording her Fearless, Pink, Communicate Now and 1989 albums.
“That’s a enterprise determination that’s framed by the copyright regime, and in addition framed by the particular settlement that she had together with her first document firm,” Khimji notes.
Within the copyright portion of his class, Khimji will use this case examine to discover the “distinction between possession of the masters, that are the recordings, and possession of the efficiency, which is the songwriting and so forth.”
He’ll additionally dive into two lawsuits Swift fielded for copyright infringement over her hit, Shake it Off.
As for the part on emblems, Khimji stated he’d pull a case examine from Swift’s orbit, and concentrate on Travis Kelce, her NFL boyfriend. Kelce filed 5 trademark requests to guard his identify and a few of his signature catchphrases like “Alright Nah” and “KillaTrav” in October 2023.
Whereas educating the core ideas of contract regulation, Khimji will even dive into Swift’s historical past with Spotify. Their authorized feud resulted in Swift pulling her music off the streamer’s web site for 3 years whereas bemoaning the meagre royalties that artists obtain from the corporate per music play.
When Khimji pitched the Swift-themed course to the Queen’s School of Regulation, he was initially shocked that there was skepticism across the thought.
“I’m a Swiftie, proper? So I simply assumed the thought can be met with common enthusiasm,” he stated.
He realized that making a “popular culture phenomenon the topic of a course at an expert college” would take some convincing. Ultimately he was capable of show the educational worth of the category and get it authorized.
“Haters are going to hate and generally you must shake issues off,” he joked.
“I’m a believer in pushing the envelope a bit on the subject of what authorized schooling appears like. In fact, I acknowledge that historic concepts have plenty of relevance at this time,” Khimji stated, “However I additionally acknowledge that at this time’s college students are going to be making use of authorized and enterprise ideas in a recent setting.”
“There’s worth in making course materials relatable, which is what this course is actually attempting to do.”
Khimji notes that leisure regulation is already an “interesting space for college students” and he sees some future development on this regulation specialization with the arrival of social media “influencers.”
“There’s a requirement, I feel, for fame and buying and interesting with it. And to that diploma, the sorts of agreements that we see within the leisure trade, I feel, can be develop into increasingly more prevalent.”
A working paper from the U.S.’ Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis notes that the “influencer advertising financial system” grew from being price about US$2 billion in 2021 to virtually US$13.8 billion in 2022. With roughly 50 million content material creators worldwide, that’s a complete lot of brand name offers and contracts to barter.
However for Khimji, the principle motive to supply a course like that is to get college students “excited and engaged.”
Regulation (Taylor’s Model) can be provided as an upper-year elective, open to second- and third-year regulation college students, and can start initially of the subsequent educational yr in September.
