Meet the York Uni student who wrote her master’s thesis on Taylor Swift

A York student has gone viral on Reddit after writing her master’s thesis on Taylor Swift’s albums Folklore and Evermore.

Liv Shaw, who studies MA English Literary Studies at York, has gained over 2.8k upvotes on Reddit after posting about her dissertation titled “‘Passed down like folk songs’; An Analysis of Story and Character in Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore”.

The 15,000-word thesis explores the stories and characters on the albums with a chapter on Taylor Swift herself.

We spoke to Liv to find out what inspired her to write such an amazing diss. She told The York Tab: “Honestly I’m a big Taylor Swift fan and I really wanted to write my dissertation on something unusual that hadn’t really been done before. I was lucky enough to be referred to someone at York who became my supervisor and he had written a mini essay on the albums himself!

“I feel like when I listened to the albums I could hear the classic literary devices and thought it would be a goldmine for essay content.”

Liv said the academic staff and her supervisors at York were very supportive of her project: “My supervisor said so many times that this is a project after his own heart. He even said he was blasting Taylor in the printing room when he knew I’d handed in – he was so supportive! Honestly, the uni kind of embraced the idea and I’d had emails from other tutors about it who said it was a “timely topic”

Taylor Swift fans have gone crazy for Liv’s dissertation with many calling on her to release it so they could read. One fan said: “Beautiful! I should not be allowed to award degrees because I would give you a first just based on the title” with another commenting: “HOLY SHIT. PUBLISH BESTIE!!!!! CONGRATS! GO GET THAT BAG!”

When asked about the online attention her thesis had gained, Liv said: “It honestly surprised me! Obviously I did the obligatory self posts on Facebook and Twitter but I’ve had a lot of messages across Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit requesting to read it, just general congratulations and people even requesting to cite me!

She continued: “Seeing people comment things like “master’s thesis idea” and “inspiration for proposals” has made me so happy, it’s not exactly a conventional dissertation but as both a fan of literature and Taylor Swift, seeing more research into her is something I’ll always be interested in!”

Brb changing my diss idea immediately.

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