PopSongLab & ISON presents:
Taylor Swift Academy
A full-day Swiftology seminar in English
led by musicologist Gergely Fazekas,
Associate Professor at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music
PopSongLab & ISON presents:
Taylor Swift Academy
A full-day Swiftology seminar in English
led by musicologist Gergely Fazekas,
Associate Professor at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music
Date: 17 January 2026 (Saturday), from 11 am to 6 pm
Venue: ISON (1074 Budapest, Hársfa utca 25.)
The seminar will be held in English language.
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In November 2024, we organised Hungary's first open seminar in the discipline of swiftology at ISON in Budapest. The Taylor Swift Academy, which included six lectures on two full Saturdays, was so successful and met with such great interest that we repeated it in January 2025.
On 17 January 2026, we will hold the first English-language Taylor Swift Academy in Hungary on a full Saturday at ISON, with three lectures aimed at the English-speaking swiftie community in Hungary.
Taylor Swift, the pop cultural phenomenon, is now the subject of university seminars all over the world. If Harvard, Stanford, Berklee or New York University are out of your reach, then the Taylor Swift Academy is for you: a one-day seminar, a series of three lectures in the academic field of swiftology, led by Gergely Fazekas, Associate Professor at the prestigious Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. This course will not deal with the rumours about Taylor Swift's private life (by the way, congratulations, future Mrs Kelce!), the global economic impact of her activities or the extreme right's political conspiracy theories about her. The focus will be on Taylor Swift’s art. We will explore the origins of her musical style, the poetic aspects of her lyrics, the main elements of her musical universe and of course try to put all these topics into a larger context. Not only to understand how pop music works in the 21st century, but also to better understand ourselves by examining the basic human emotions and life situations that appear in Taylor Swift's songs.
SESSION 1
„When you think Tim McGraw”
FROM COUNTRY TO POP AND BEYOND
How can country music be defined and how did the teenager Taylor Swift fit into this framework? How did she later transcend the boundaries of country and evolve into pop music and beyond? And how did she manage to keep country elements in her mainstream pop songs? These are the main questions of the first session, which offers a 90-minute overview of a career spanning 12 albums and nearly 300 songs.
SESSION 2
„My muses acquired like bruises”
THE CRAFT OF SONGWRITING
What makes a good song lyric? And a good poem? Is there a difference between the two? Is Taylor Swift really a “literary giant”, as the English Shakespeare scholar Sir Jonathan Bate puts it? What are the basic characteristics of the three poetic categories Taylor Swift has created for her songs: the “Quill Pen”, the “Fountain Pen” and the “Glitter Gel Pen Songs”? In the second session we will look for answers to these questions.
SESSION 3
„It was all my design”
ELEMENTS OF A MUSICAL UNIVERSE
What are the basic musical elements that make up Taylor Swift's songs? What holds her chameleon-like, diverse output together? Are there certain rhythmic, harmonic or melodic characteristics that define her musical universe? And how can she use music in the process of storytelling? In the final session of the Taylor Swift Academy, we will address these questions by analyzing specific songs musically.
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Gergely Fazekas (PhD) is a Associate Professor at the Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest, Hungary). After studying literature and philosophy at the ELTE Faculty of Humanities, he graduated in musicology from the Liszt Academy in 2006 and has since taught music history at the institution, where he received his PhD in 2013. His dissertation entitled “J. S. Bach and the Two Cultures of Musical Form” was published in book form in Hungarian in 2018. He is the founder of the Liszt Academy’s youth programs, the “Liszt-kidz academy”, has worked as a consultant for major Hungarian music institutions and festivals, and was editor-in-chief of the oldest Hungarian music publisher, Rózsavölgyi, for four years. His academic articles have been published in English, French and Hungarian musicological journals, but he also regularly writes music journalism for the general public. He spent the 2017/2018 academic year as a visiting professor at Bard College (New York) on a Fulbright Scholarship. In fall 2021, he launched his public lecture series on mainstream pop music titled “Dalszerelőműhely” (“PopSongLab”) at ISON Budapest.
ISON. Your cultural living room in Budapest.
A cozy event space and specialty café in the heart of the seventh district, with a warm, feel-good vibe. Once a commercial space, now refurbished into a modern, intimate venue, it offers creative and immersive programming alongside local Hungarian pastries and a fine selection of beverages. Doors open one hour before each show.
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