Studies in Taylor Swift: Recent Episodes
Clio Doyle
Thanks so much to those of you who have listened to and supported this podcast! I am so excited to announce that my book, Dear Reader: Taylor Swift and the Idea of English Literature, will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann in 2026.
You can find the press release here: https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/hutchinson-heinemann-exclusively-pre-empts-academic-clio-doyles-celebration-of-taylor-swift-lyrics
Meanwhile, I’m coming across all sorts of interesting ideas, having some weird ideas of my own, and generally marinating in Swift content. Hence… the newsletter!
I’m planning to round up my favorite Taylor-Swift-related (and some broader literature-related) reading and thinking every two weeks. You can expect: links to articles, including anything I publish, close readings of songs, updates on my teaching and book, reactions to Swift’s new releases, and anything else I think might be of interest. So please do subscribe if you want to go on this journey with me!
You can subscribe here: https://cliodoyle.substack.com/subscribe
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com
This is an episode from the first three seasons of Studies in Taylor Swift, which ran from 2021-22. Although the entire podcast is no longer available, selected episodes will be regularly reissued.
Clio and Meredith discuss sound studies and what it can tell us about the work of Taylor Swift.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
This is an episode from the first three seasons of Studies in Taylor Swift, which ran from 2021-22. Although the entire podcast is no longer available, selected episodes will be regularly reissued.
What does Stephen Sondheim have to do with Taylor Swift?
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
This is an episode from the first three seasons of Studies in Taylor Swift, which ran from 2021-22. Although the entire podcast is no longer available, selected episodes will be regularly reissued.
In this podcast's heart is a Christmas tree farm where the people would come and cite Kierkegaard.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
This is an episode from the first three seasons of Studies in Taylor Swift, which ran from 2021-22. Although the entire podcast is no longer available, selected episodes will be regularly reissued.
Clio compares the short film of "All Too Well" to Citizen Kane, talks about the symbolism of hands, and makes some predictions about the year 2023.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
This is an episode from the first three seasons of Studies in Taylor Swift, which ran from 2021-22. Although the entire podcast is no longer available, selected episodes will be regularly reissued.
Old episode, brand new phone. Clio talks about vintage clothing and millennial angst.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
This is an episode from the first three seasons of Studies in Taylor Swift, which ran from 2021-22. Although the entire podcast is no longer available, selected episodes will be regularly reissued.
Don't read the last page, but Clio discusses the refusal of endings in Taylor Swift's "New Year's Day."
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
This is an episode from the first three seasons of Studies in Taylor Swift, which ran from 2021-22. Although the entire podcast is no longer available, selected episodes will be regularly reissued.
Clio and Meredith discuss the page as matter and metaphor.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
This is an episode from the first three seasons of Studies in Taylor Swift, which ran from 2021-22. Although the entire podcast is no longer available, selected episodes will be regularly reissued.
Clio revises her opinion of "All Too Well," at length, with only one minor passing mention of John Milton's Paradise Lost.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix. You can send questions or comments to studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
This reissue of episode four of the podcast lingers like a tattoo kiss because it knew everything when it was young. Clio reads nostalgia in a whole lot of Taylor Swift's songs including "Haunted," "Style," "cardigan," "The Best Day," "seven," and "Wildest Dreams."
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix.
This is a reissue of the first ever episode of Studies in Taylor Swift, on the song "the lakes" from Swift's album folklore, read through the lens of (who else?) Roland Barthes.
If you're a real fan you've already heard this episode. But hey, maybe you're nostalgic for the good old days of the podcast, or the good old days when you could go die by a lake without anyone taking your picture (like Wordsworth, lol). Or the good old days when you could say that academics don't take Taylor Swift seriously? How young we all were.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix.
This is a reissue of a past episode. Did this podcast used to be about... Olivia Rodrigo? That's uncanny. I could have sworn it was about Taylor Swift. Just kidding, deep down it was always about Freud.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix.
This is a reissue of a past episode. Clio goes back to the stone every day to talk about the ecofeminist reading of "ivy" - the song, the plant, and everything in between.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix.
This is a reissue of the final episode of season one of this podcast. Sometimes what you really need to do is take a hard look at the historical context of art. Clio walks down Cornelia Street (again) and talks about street closures and traffic in relation to Taylor Swift's 2019 album Lover and the covid pandemic.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix.
Clio asks whether Taylor Swift has a style - and what is style - and should this podcast be renamed "Roland Barthes Reads Taylor Swift?"
Instead of getting bogged down in all these questions, Clio runs Taylor Swift songs through the textual analysis tool Voyant.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix.
This is a reissue of episode two of Studies in Taylor Swift, on Bakhtinian heteroglossia in Taylor Swift's "Love Story."
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? Baby, just say yes.
Studies in Taylor Swift is produced and edited by Clio Doyle. Cover art is by Finley Doyle. Music is by Audionautix.
In this episode, the final episode of the podcast - for now! - Clio close-reads the song "Maroon" and its reflections on blood, wine, loneliness, haze, and talent.
Please take a moment to fill in this short questionnaire to help measure the podcast's impact: https://forms.gle/Fx6J3KX7iTcaNCTw9.
Clio has a PhD in English and uses it to interpret the songs of Taylor Swift. You can listen to her current podcast, Clio/Mireille: A Fan Fiction Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.
Music is by Audionautix.
Meredith returns to the podcast to discuss Taylor Swift's private jet usage in relation to Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies and parasocial relationships. We discuss a list of the most frequently flown private jets belonging to celebrities released by Yard based on data from the Twitter account CelebrityJets (in the episode, Clio wrongly states that CelebrityJets compiled the list). We also discuss upcoming release Midnights!
Meredith has a PhD in Comparative Literature and works at a writing center. If you like cats, etymology, or both, find her on Instagram at @caedmon_the_catman.
If you want to hear more from Meredith on this podcast, check out "Taylor Swift and Sound Studies" and "Taylor Swift and Folklore" from Season 1 and "Taylor Swift and the Page" from Season 2.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Check out the trailer to my new podcast, Clio/Mireille: A Fanfiction Podcast, in which Mireille Pardon and I read and analyze fanfiction one pairing at a time! The first episode comes out on August 10th and can be found wherever (or at least most places) you get your podcasts.
In episode 11, Clio and Mireille talk about more fan fiction. We read and analyze "Wolves of Swift River" by waspabi and talk about wolves, womanhood, and peeing standing up (look, contrary to popular opinion, every episode can't be about Kierkegaard). We also talk about the genre of songfic, specifically "Taylor Swift" by osprey_archer in which Steve and Bucky from the Marvel universe argue flirtatiously about Taylor Swift. Also mentioned is a Batman fanfiction, "Don't You Worry Your Pretty Little Mind" by timdrakewayne.
Also, in important news, Clio and Mireille are starting a new podcast called "Clio/Mireille: A Fanfiction Podcast" that's exclusively about fanfiction. We'll read representative works from different fandoms, starting with The Queen's Gambit! The podcast is out on August 10th so if you like hearing us talk about fanfiction, keep your eye out for it wherever you get your podcasts!
Mireille can be found onTwitter (https://twitter.com/pardon_mi) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@pardon_mi).
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Clio close reads Taylor Swift's poem "The Trick to Letting Go."
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Clio asks how endings work in Taylor Swift's "New Year's Day" with help from Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction and Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Clio explores the depiction of the mind in Taylor Swift's work and what it tells us about gender, fame, and the imagination, citing Daphne Grace in Beyond Bodies: Gender, Literature and the Enigma of Consciousness.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Is Taylor Swift the same kind of poet as T. S. Eliot? Clio considers Andrew Lloyd Webber's and Trevor Nunn's lyrics to "Memory," T. S. Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night, " and Taylor Swift's lyrics to "Beautiful Ghosts."
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
After discussing the popular fan theory that the scarf in "All Too Well" symbolizes Taylor's virginity and contrasting readings of "All Too Well" with readings of Moby Dick, Clio asks what Jack Antonoff's statement that you can hear Stephen Sondheim's and James Lapine's Into the Woods in everything he does means for our understanding of his collaborations with Taylor Swift.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com and check out the podcast website at https://cliodoyle.wixsite.com/studiesintaylorswift.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Clio compares the short film of "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" to Citizen Kane and discusses three versions of the song : the short film, the "Sad Girl Autumn Version," and Taylor's Saturday Night Live performance. Clio discusses liveness and mediation with reference to Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Philip Auslander's Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com and check out the podcast website at https://cliodoyle.wixsite.com/studiesintaylorswift.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Clio ponders the ten minute version of "All Too Well" and comes to some conclusions about keychains, scarves, and picture frames.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com and check out the podcast website at https://cliodoyle.wixsite.com/studiesintaylorswift.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
Clio and Meredith discuss the figure of the page in Taylor Swift's work with reference to Bonnie Mak's How the Page Matters. They also discuss internet rankings of Taylor's songs: Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-songs-of-all-time-1224767) and "All 199 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked" (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/taylor-swift-songs-ranked-rob-sheffield-201800) and Vulture's "All 179 Taylor Swift Songs, Ranked" (https://www.vulture.com/article/all-taylor-swift-songs-ranked-from-worst-to-best.html). Meredith has a PhD in Comparative Literature and works at a writing center. If you like cats, etymology, or both, find her on Instagram at @caedmon_the_catman.
If you want to hear more from Meredith on this podcast, check out "Taylor Swift and Sound Studies" and "Taylor Swift and Folklore" from Season 1.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com and check out the podcast website at https://cliodoyle.wixsite.com/studiesintaylorswift.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
In episode 2 of season 2, Clio ponders the ecological implications of ivy with reference to Stacy Alaimo's Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self, Donna Haraway's Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, and Timothy Morton's Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com and check out the podcast website at https://cliodoyle.wixsite.com/studiesintaylorswift.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
In the first episode of season 2, Clio reads Olivia Rodrigo's deja vu as a commentary on the influence of Taylor Swift with reference to Freud's The 'Uncanny' and Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence.Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com and check out the podcast website at https://cliodoyle.wixsite.com/studiesintaylorswift.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle. See more of Finley's work at https://tangelofin.wordpress.com/.
In Episode 16, the final episode of Season One of this podcast, Clio walks Cornelia Street (again) to ponder history, power, and traffic lights with reference to Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning and John Strausbaugh's The Village.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
CW: discussion of sexual violence and dubious consent.
In episode 15, Mireille Pardon, Assistant Professor of History at Berea College, returns to talk about more fan fiction. Today we discuss the Omegaverse and how Taylor Swift fits into it! We read and analyze "Are We Out of the Woods?" by AlphaDork and talk about gender, violence, and what happens to books after the nuclear apocalypse.
Mireille can be found onTwitter (https://twitter.com/pardon_mi) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@pardon_mi).
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
There isn't a full episode this week but two more will come out in the next two weeks. And that will actually be the end of Season 1 of this podcast! Season 2 will come out later this fall once the semester has started - maybe October? In the meantime I will start working on a website for the podcast with transcribed and expanded episodes and an ongoing annotated bibliography of work on Taylor Swift and resources on critical theory. Anyway I'll be back next week! Remember to follow the podcast to be notified about all of this.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
In episode 14, Clio is once again joined by Meredith Ringel-Ensley to discuss folklore - the album and the field of study. What kinds of stories is Taylor interested in telling in folklore and evermore, and how does she tell them? Clio and Meredith discuss Vladimir Propp's work on Russian folktales, Gérard Genette on narrative theory, and the cultural connotations of Merlot and Olive Garden.
Meredith has a PhD in Comparative Literature and works at a writing center. If you like cats, etymology, or both, find her on Instagram at @caedmon_the_catman.
The next episode will be out on August 13th!
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 13 surveys three recent articles about Taylor Swift that demonstrate different ways of thinking about the authenticity of Taylor Swift's public persona. The articles discussed are "Taylor Swift: the hardest working, zaniest girl in showbusiness..." by Maryn Wilkinson in Celebrity Studies vol. 10 issue 3, "A Vernacular of Surveillance: Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus Perform White Authenticity" by Rachel Dubrofsky in Surveillance and Society vol. 14 issue 2, and "Dorking Out with Taylor and Kanye: Nerd Pop via Goffman and the Performance of Stigma" by Edward Comentale in the Journal of Popular Music Studies vol. 28 issue 1.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
In episode 12, Clio is joined by Mireille Pardon, Assistant Professor of History at Berea College, to discuss fan fiction tropes, real person fiction, and the depiction of Taylor Swift in "Daylight" by GetMeDietCoke and "Under the Sun" by today. Also discussed is the chapter "Intimate Intertextuality and Performative Fragments in Media Fanfiction" by Kristina Busse in Fandom, Second Edition, edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. Also check out "Tis the Damn Season: Taylor Swift's evermore," a compilation of very short articles written by academics for Post45.Mireille can be found onTwitter (https://twitter.com/pardon_mi) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@pardon_mi).
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 11 asks whether there is something fundamentally ironic about gender with reference to Taylor Swift's "The Man," Søren Kierkegaard's On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, and Claire Colebrook's Irony.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
In Episode 10, Clio is joined by fellow English Literature PhD Maggie Deli to discuss celebrity studies. What would Erving Goffman say about the feud between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry? What happens when Swift's art becomes political? And is Swift trying to become less of a celebrity? Mentioned briefly are the article "To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter" by Alice Marwick and danah boyd and Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Societyby Richard Dyer.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 9 explores the popular appeal of the theory that Taylor Swift is secretly queer through the lens of queer affect theory, with reference to Heather Love's Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 8 asks what Marx and Taylor Swift have to do with each other, with some reference to Louis Althusser.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
In episode 7, Clio and guest Meredith Ringel-Ensley discuss sound studies in relation to "Our Song." What is the difference between sound and song? What is a soundscape? And what does any of this have to do with the Eucharist?
Meredith has a PhD in Comparative Literature and works at a writing center. If you like cats, etymology, or both, find her on Instagram at @caedmon_the_catman.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
The podcast is on hiatus until June 17, at which point episodes will once again come out weekly. I am working on a podcast for the National Humanities Center called "What is the future of AI in the humanities?" If you're interested, please check out their website and keep an eye out for the podcast in July. It has nothing to do with Taylor Swift... or does it? (It doesn't.)
In episode 6, we turn to Cleanth Brooks (The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry) for guidance in reading the words of Taylor Swift.
The next episode will come out on May 28th.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 5 attempts to determine whether Taylor Swift has a style and what its characteristics are with some help from Daniel Shore's Cyberformalism: Histories of Linguistic Forms in the Digital Archive and our computer overlords (Voyant at https://voyant-tools.org/).
The next episode will come out on May 14th.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 4 takes on the problem of nostalgia with help from Svetlana Boym (The Future of Nostalgia), Thomas Dodman (What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion), Fredric Jameson (Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism), and Susan Stewart (On Longing).
I need to take a week off, but I will be back with episode 5 on April 30th. In the meantime, consider the following questions and let me know if you come to any conclusions: Does Taylor Swift have a style? And if so, what defines it?
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 3 is a reading of "cardigan" in relation to the recurring trope of the old piece of clothing in Swift's work, with reference to scholarly work on things: the objective correlative as described by TS Eliot, Jonathan Gil Harris's Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare, Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, and Bill Brown's "Thing Theory."
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 2 is an exploration of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia or dialogism and J.L. Austin's concept of performative utterances in relation to Taylor Swift's song "Love Story."
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.
Episode 1 is a close reading of Taylor Swift's song "the lakes" in relation to Romantic poetry and Roland Barthes's concept of the Death of the Author.
Get in touch with comments, questions, or just to say hi at studiesintaylorswift@gmail.com.
Music: "Happy Strummin" by Audionautix.
Cover art by Finley Doyle.