🎓 Swifties get (Harvard) degrees

It’s Wednesday, Boston.

✈️ Celebrate Leap Day by … booking a flight? Both PLAY and Southwest airlines are offering Leap Day deals this year, with PLAY offering one-way discounts on European round trip bookings and Southwest holding an up to 30% off sale. Bon voyage! 

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Warm, windy, wet weather

• Electric street parking

• The flavor trail comes to town

Up first…

ARTS & CULTURE

Taylor Swift: Harvard’s Version

We’re sure you’ve heard about Harvard’s iconic “Taylor Swift and Her World” class. But what’s it actually like to take it? We talked to students, a TA, and professor Stephanie Burt to get the inside scoop. 

⭐ Taylor Swift’s star power made the class possible. Professor Stephanie Burt always wanted to teach a course on one of her favorite songwriters, but until recently, none of them were big enough to grab a 20-something’s attention. “I could organize a whole course around Scott Miller from Game Theory … but I don't think that many Harvard students would take it,” she said. And according to Mary Pankowski, a student in the class, Burt’s instincts were right: “I was like, ‘There's a Taylor Swift class?’ And that was it … I didn't need any more convincing.”

📚 But don’t get it twisted: Swift’s work is Harvard material. “She’s also someone whose work I, at least, can easily connect to other and older kinds of literature,” said Burt. According to class TA Matthew Jordan (who was famously hired from Burt’s viral tweet), the use of Swift’s material isn’t all that different from any other English class. “In another poetry class, it might not feel that weird if you're just reading poetry … but in this case, we're reading books about country music and reading the works of Taylor Swift.” 

📝 And so is the coursework. Unfortunately, even in this class, karaoke does not count as classwork. It is Harvard, after all. According to Pankowski, the work mostly includes readings for each class and a few papers over the course of the semester, at least one of which has to analyze Swift specifically (Pankowski’s first paper is on the song “it’s time to go”). 

✨ That said, the subject matter certainly adds a little extra sparkle. While the class is much more than a space to fangirl, the subject matter definitely adds to the energy. “The students clearly want to be there,” said Burt. In her words, the vibes are “superb” and there’s tons of student involvement for a class this size (over 200!). And that may be because, as Jordan says, the students, in many cases “know far more than [the professor and TAs] about Taylor … the students are in some ways already experts in the subject material.” 

🎓 The class reminds us of something greater. Beyond “the idea that Taylor Swift is an artist worthy of the same critical attention that we would pay to [famous poets],” as Jordan said, the class’ existence and the media coverage that’s followed has helped underscore an important message: “Works of art can reach many people,” Burt said. “New art and popular art has a great deal in common with older or more obscure art … feelings are real and craft is real and genre and medium are real.”

QUICK QUESTION

🔥 Are you experiencing Taylor Swift burnout?

TOGETHER WITH THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE TREASURY

Plot twist: You (might) have hidden riches

💰🏦 Remember that scene in Harry Potter when he discovers a vault full of money left by his parents? Well, a similar surprise could be waiting for you in the Massachusetts State Treasury (minus the wands and magic, of course). From forgotten savings to misplaced checks, who knows what hidden cash is waiting for you? Search your name online (no goblins or spells necessary) and find out if you have unclaimed property in less than two minutes. 

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🌧️ Brace for a warm, windy, wet, then frigid, 24 hours. Say goodbye to our spring weather. Because, come tomorrow, Mother Nature plans to remind us it’s still winter. Today, you can expect strong winds (think: 50 m.p.h. gusts with a wind advisory starting at 1 p.m.) along with rainy weather all day, followed by a sudden drop in temps tonight that’ll have us all feeling like it’s February again (there may even be some snow!). Tomorrow, things should dry up, but stay chilly, before warming up again later in the week. Oh, New England weather. You never cease to amaze.

🏢 The migrant crisis comes to the Seaport. In the latest update from the migrant crisis, Gov. Maura Healey announced plans to open a new overflow shelter in a Seaport office building. The site doesn’t have a set opening date, but Healey said Monday that she’d like it to open “as soon as possible.” However, the plan isn’t without pushback. United Way, the organization responsible for the project, has gotten criticism from neighborhood officials about their lack of communication with residents and failure to respond to questions.

⚡ Street parking in Boston is about to get electric. Literally. According to a Tuesday announcement from Mayor Michelle Wu, the city is planning to get 250 new curbside charging stations in the next two years, giving Boston’s roughly 7,000 EV owners a place to plug in while they’re parked on the street. Two companies have been selected to install the stations, but things like price and location haven’t been set yet, and the work won’t be able to begin until their contracts are finalized and approved by the City Council. 

🎭 It’s a good day to be a theater kid. Tickets to “The Queen of Versailles,” a hot, broadway-bound show starring Kristin Chenoweth, go on sale to the general public today. It’s making its world premiere in Boston this summer at the Emerson Colonial Theater, and tickets are expected to move fast, so grab them here. But if musical theater isn’t your thing, a slew of heavy-hitter comedians (Taylor Tomlinson’s ex-boyfriend, Catherine Cohen, The “Whose Line is it Anyway” crew, etc.) are coming to town this spring, and Boston.com rounded up some must-sees here.

ONE LAST THING

Expedition: Flavor!

Seltzerheads, rejoice! The flavor trail is in town. Polar, the Worcester-based seltzer company, just released six new flavors for their “Expedition: Flavor” initiative, and they’re offering free merch to anyone who can discover them in the wild. 

Some of the flavors themselves have local ties, like cranberry raspberry, which is meant to “evoke” memories of summers in New England, or island blueberry, which has a bright taste said to help counter our “dark, cold” northeastern winters. 

And while we can’t guarantee local nostalgia if you take a sip, we can tell you that they are available in Boston, and if you find and upload a new location on their flavor trail map, you’ll get a free T-shirt.  

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🚰 Thanks for reading! There isn’t much we wouldn’t do for a free T-shirt.

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, the Massachusetts State Treasury, for helping residents reclaim what’s rightfully theirs.

🦷 The results are in: B-Siders slightly underestimated the worth of their baby teeth in 2024, guessing that the tooth fairy pays $3.87 on average in the Northeast (she pays $6.87). One reader said: “Some of my kids' friends get $20 per tooth … At that rate all my teeth are worth $560. Someone bring me the pliers!”

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