Stephanie Burt

Last month, Harvard announced that I would be teaching a class next semester called “Taylor Swift and Her World,” an open-enrollment lecture partly about Swift’s work and career and partly about literature (poems, novels, memoirs) that overlaps with, or speaks to, that work. When the news came out, my inbox blew up with dozens of requests, from as far away as New Zealand.

Illustration by Celina Pereira; photographs by Bettmann; Richard Lautens / Toronto Star / GettyIn 1952, in her native Baltimore, Adrienne Rich delivered her first public lecture, “Some Influences of Poetry Upon the Course of History.” She was 23. Over the next 59 years, Rich (1929–2012) would herself alter both poetry and history. As an author, a teacher, and an editor, she helped define American feminism.