Taylor Swift mania hits Philippine classrooms

US singer Taylor Swift performs on stage during a concert as part of her Eras World Tour in Sydney on February 23.//AFP

Manila – The Taylor Swift craze has arrived in classrooms in the Philippine capital, with a premier university rolling out a celebrity studies course examining the singer and her impact on global pop culture.

As the performer visits Asia this week, more than 300 students signed up for the elective course at the University of the Philippines, filling limited slots within minutes and prompting the administration to launch an extra class.

“We’re going to treat Taylor Swift as a celebrity, which means we’re going to look at her from the lens of various ways of thinking such as the intersection of sex, gender, and class,” Cherish Brillon, a professor in the broadcast communications department, said after her first lecture.

Herself a “Swiftie”, as fans of…