SINGAPORE: The phenomenon of Taylor Swift’s rise, reach, and influence is something people around the globe have witnessed with awe.
It has also been taken seriously as the subject of study by academics around the globe, including a Teaching Assistant from the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Ms Aimee-Sophia Lim was among those who presented a paper at Swiftposium 2024 in Melbourne from Feb 11 to 13. The academic conference was a collaboration among scholars from six universities in Australia and New Zealand.
As Ms Lim, who graduated from FASS with a degree in Global Studies last year, is teaching full-time, she presented her paper virtually at the hybrid event, a Feb 28 article on the NUS website says.
This year’s Swiftposium in Melbourne is the first such event. It examines Swift ”as a cultural icon of extraordinary influences,” with the conference allowing “scholars to engage in critical dialogue about Swift’s popularity and its profound implications for a range of issues including gender, fandom, popular culture, literature, the economy, the music industry, and more.”
After it was announced last September, it garnered over 400 submissions from scholars. Among them, 130 were accepted from across 60 academic disciplines from 78 academic institutions around the world.
Ms Lim is quoted as saying, “Being a Swiftie since the age of eight, I was really thrilled when I received the email informing me that I had been accepted to present at Swiftposium, especially after realising that the competition was steep due to the media coverage it had received.”
While Swift was undeniably popular before the Eras Tour hit the road in 2023, her fame, which had been steadily rising, skyrocketed last year. Fans clamoured to snap up tickets to her shows, and every city she’s taken her tour to has seen an economic boost.
Her extraordinary year was capped when TIME magazine named her the 2023 Person of the Year.
“Most people would assume that the study of Swift and popular culture would be explored from the perspective of Media and Communications Studies or Literature, but at Swiftposium, there were presentations from fields such as Economics, Psychology, Neuroscience, and, of course, Sociology, making it a truly interdisciplinary experience,” Ms Lim is quoted as saying in the article.
The paper she presented is titled “Miss Americana’s Influence on Southeast Asian Swifties’ Socio-Political Activism.”
“After my presentation, I received messages from fellow attendees and presenters with feedback regarding my research, which even led to further discussions on the subject matter. Overall, this experience has inspired me to continue researching and to submit other proposals to academic conferences due to the enriching takeaways,” she said. /TISG
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