Swifties, the Swiftie-curious, and the Swiftie-averse all crowded into the Old Main 4 lounge on Wednesday, October 8th for the long-awaited Taylor Swift Literary Salon, courtesy of Professor Jim Dawes and student worker Callisto Martinez \u201926. The evening that followed included analysis, trivia, and crafting, all centered around T-Swizzle herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jim, never going out of style, turned up sporting a Chiefs shirt that read \u201cGo Taylor\u2019s Boyfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, no Swift-salon would be complete without Taylor Swift- (and autumn-) themed food and beverages. Department Coordinator and resident Swift-sleuth Jan Beebe determined that pumpkin bread, pumpkin spice lattes, and macarons were all Swift\u2019s favorites (though Jan noted that chicken tenders would also have been applicable, if out-of-budget).<\/p>\n<\/div> <\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to the sweets, lit salon attendees had the chance to make friendship bracelets with colorful beads, letters, and string supplied at the entrance to the lounge. Rumor has it that Jim made a bracelet to consecrate his friendship with Professor Michael Prior\u2014though he only spelled out \u201cMike.\u201d It\u2019s Nice To Have A Friend. Reports suggest that this might be Jim\u2019s first friendship bracelet. It is unclear if Prof. Prior made one for him in return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was very sweet to tie the bracelet around Jim\u2019s wrist and think that it would fit around Michael\u2019s,\u201d Callisto said. \u201cTurns out, Jim has very large wrists. I was expecting Jim to use the colors of a Taylor Swift album for the bracelet, but he devised a rainbow of his own imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The event started with an opinion survey. Few attendees identified themselves as Swifties, and, in fact, most claimed to be Taylor Swift haters. 40 percent of participants said they were disappointed in Swift\u2019s new album Life of a Showgirl<\/em> (which had just released the Friday before) and no one expressed much excitement about the piece, so Jim skipped the questions about everyone\u2019s favorite part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wouldn\u2019t be a lit salon without some literary analysis, so Jim also gave the students a pop quiz about devices from their favorite Tortured Poet. Questions started out light, but soon plumbed the depths of participants\u2019 poetic knowledge, interrogating them about everything from epistrophe to epizeuxis.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat was deliberately a mean test of the most arcane references possible,\u201d Jim said. \u201cIf they had gotten them, I would\u2019ve been surprised, but through elimination, some cunningly got good answers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Done with the academic bits, the main event commenced: Taylor trivia. Jim\u2019s questions stretched the Swift-savvy of the audience, asking about names, titles, and years important to T-Swizzle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m new to Taylor Swift, frankly,\u201d Jim said. \u201cI researched. I was stunned that people knew that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the first round, team Solidarity had zero points, to which Jim said, \u201cA monkey could have gotten one.\u201d As it turned out, team Phil did get one, to demonstrate its primate prowess, if nothing else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Other teams had more success, with team \u201cWood\u201d (named after the universally panned song on Swift\u2019s new album) in the lead. Not to brag, but I was on this team (I did not contribute a single answer). <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the second round, though, team \u201cWood\u201d wasn\u2019t Ready For It (and lost the person who had answered all our questions in the first round). Team \u201cWood\u201d dropped to second, surpassed by Team Swiftie. You could say that they knew it All Too Well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve done salons before where it\u2019s a big group discussion, which is cool, I totally dig that,\u201d Jim said. \u201cBut this felt more like just everyone was playing together, which you don\u2019t see a ton of. It was delightful to see people gathering in those little clusters smiling and laughing and playing was cool.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We thank Professor Jim Dawes for taking the time to host this literary salon and have fun with us in the department!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Daniel Graham ’26 Swifties, the Swiftie-curious, and the Swiftie-averse all crowded into the Old Main 4 lounge on Wednesday, October 8th for the long-awaited Taylor Swift Literary Salon, courtesy of Professor Jim Dawes and student worker Callisto Martinez \u201926. The evening that followed included analysis, trivia, and crafting, all centered around T-Swizzle herself. Jim, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1193,"featured_media":0,"parent":11307,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11383","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11383"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11413,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11383\/revisions\/11413"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jim](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/603\/2025\/11\/IMG_8909-768x1024.jpeg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Taylor](\"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/603\/2025\/11\/IMG_8908-768x1024.jpeg\")
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