New Bad Bunny class debuting at Emory this semester
It has been a good year for Bad Bunny.
The chart-topping artist released a new blockbuster album and sparked an economic boom in his homeland of Puerto Rico with a concert residency. Emory University is capitalizing on the momentum with a new Bad Bunny course this fall.
The class will focus on Bad Bunny’s musical output, as well as the political and socioeconomic forces that shaped the artist’s development in Puerto Rico, according to Emory’s course catalog.
The class falls under Emory’s “Latinx Studies Initiative,” which grapples with issues relevant to Hispanic communities living in the U.S. in a multidisciplinary way. One of the initiative’s goals is “the creation of an undergraduate Minor in Latinx Studies” at Emory.
According to the course description, Bad Bunny’s recent album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”), will serve as the class “guide as we learn about the history of Puerto Rico.”
Since its January release, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” earned widespread acclaim for its synthesizing of past and present Puerto Rican rhythms, and for its embrace of political themes, including the legacy of colonization on the island. During an interview with The New York Times, Bad Bunny described the project as his “most Puerto Rican” album yet.
Bad Bunny courses are beginning to spring up on campuses across the U.S., including Yale University.
And this is not the first time Emory anchored coursework around a musical icon. Last year, the university offered a sociology class about Taylor Swift.
Emory’s Bad Bunny course will place particular emphasis on “the last 30 years of U.S. colonial rule in Puerto Rico” and resistance movements on the island. Other topics broached will include nationhood, debt, tourism, mutual aid, protest and “racio-colonial capitalism.”
Weekly assignments will include readings, podcasts and song analyses.
The class is taught by Dr. Taína Figueroa, a postdoctoral fellow in Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies.
“Through my scholarship, teaching, and community work, I want to help make space in higher education and beyond for this new generation of Puerto Ricans who will determine the future of the Island and the Puerto Rican people,” Figueroa said in a past Emory profile.
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