Beyonce Becomes a College Course at Rutgers University Focusing on Race, Gender and Sexuality

By Christine Thomasos, Christian Post Reporter Saturday, February 01, 2014

Beyonce is well known for being a chart topping singer but now the 32-year-old wife and mother is going to be the subject of a course at Rutgers University.

Kevin Allred will be teaching the course called "Politicizing Beyonce" which will explore race, gender and sexuality in America, according to Rutgers Today.

"This isn't a course about Beyoncé's political engagement or how many times she performed during President Obama's inauguration weekend," Allred told Rutgers Today. "She's had a long history of girl power, feminine empowerment in her music."

Allred spoke more about the course with CBS 3.

"It's in the Women's and Gender Studies Department so anyone interested in women's studies, African American studies, or even history, you're going to get something from the course," Allred said of the course which will be offered next summer. "Songs like 'Single Ladies' coming out at a time when a lot of same-sex marriage debates were happening. 'If I Were A Boy,' a song that has a lot of back and forth in terms of gender roles. Also 'Flawless' she explicitly claims feminism."

After being questioned about being a feminist, the 32-year-old singer told British Vogue what she thought of the feminist label.

"That word can be very extreme. But I guess I am a modern-day feminist. I do believe in equality," Beyoncé told British Vogue last year. "Why do you have to choose what type of woman you are? Why do you have to label yourself anything? I'm just a woman and I love being a woman."

The 32-year-old singer decided to pen an essay as a guest writer on The Shriver Report earlier this year, where she does not refer to herself as a performer but as Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. In the essay titled "Gender Equality Is A Myth," the famed entertainer revealed why people should stop believing in the idea that men and women are treated as equals.

"We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality," she wrote. "It isn't a reality yet."