Ellen Orsi (she/they), a current MAIS Women and Gender Studies student, presented on the power—and limitations—of Taylor Swift’s reimagining the fates of classic Shakespearean characters Juliet and Ophelia in her globally-popular songs. Orsi delivered her presentation, titled But... Ophelia Doesn’t Drown & Juliet Doesn’t Drink the Poison: Taylor Swift and the Limits of White Feminist Rewriting in Global Pop, at the South West Popular/American Culture Association 2026 Summer Salon in June.
We had an opportunity to speak with Orsi about her experience at SWPACA as well as why she finds Swift and her catalog so rich for study. The below interview has been edited for length.
WGST: Can you tell us a little more about your connection with SWPACA and what draws you to Taylor Swift and Swiftie Studies, which you informed us is an emerging field?
EO: I initially became interested in the field because I was looking for ways to bridge my experience as a fan with my academic interests, and I was excited to discover that there was already a growing community of scholars doing this work. My undergraduate degree is in English and I would listen to Swift and be enthralled with her references to Charles Dickens, Sylvia Plath, and Romantic poets like Wordsworth.
Attending the South West Popular/American Culture Association’s In-Person Annual Conference in Albuquerque this past February gave me the opportunity to connect with these scholars and present my work on Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” in which I discussed the way Swift multiplies her personas across numerous different ‘Taylors’ in order to challenge typical structures of kinship. I absolutely loved my experience with SWPACA, particularly the opportunity to engage with scholars who were taking Swift, her work, and her fandom seriously as objects of academic inquiry.
Look what she’s made the culture do! So, what was your focus for this year’s Summer Salon?
I was invited to lead the panel on “Swiftie Studies: Time & Narratives” while also presenting a paper I am working on titled, “But… Ophelia Doesn’t Drown & Juliet Doesn’t Drink the Poison: Taylor Swift and the Limitations of Feminist Rewriting in Global Pop.”
The panel I moderated centered on the ways Swift is able to construct different narratives across her body of work. Particularly fascinating to me are the different interpretive frameworks, or “lenses,” through which fans understand the same songs, performances, relationships, and public narratives.
You're the Taylor Swift and Swiftie Studies Area Chair for the Northeast Popular Culture Association. (Incredible.) What makes Swift, and her work, such a rich area of analysis for you?
I find what Swift is doing to be incredibly compelling as she weaves a story over multiple albums that is able to stand alone as songs, grouped together as an album, or strung together with an invisible string across multiple eras.
Additionally, Swift commands an attention economy. Swift is able to recreate herself as Ophelia and Juliet from Shakespeare’s plays that quite literally redirected global attention toward these female archetypes, a central claim in my paper. As a fan and scholar, I like to approach Swift with nuance—both recognizing her engagement with literary canon while also analyzing the ways in which her positionality affects the interpretation and effects of her art. I think we are living at a time when an emphasis on nuance and push for complex academic arguments is more relevant than ever. Pillars of white supremacy, like all-or-nothing thinking, can find their way into even academic spaces. I want to approach Swift in a way that both recognizes her political shortcomings and the value of her work while also holding space for multiple truths.
Have you learned anything new about Taylor Swift from your participation in the Summer Salon, and has your relationship to her work changed?
When looking at Swift as a fan, it can be tempting to approach these competing narratives by asking which interpretation is “true.” [Here, Orsi is referring to competing public and private narratives about Swift’s life and relationships as well as how fans interpret, debate, and construct meaning in her work.] As a scholar, I have become much more interested in asking what the existence of those competing interpretations tells us. Why can the same text sustain such drastically different readings? What assumptions do different groups of fans bring to the text? And how does Swift's own construction of celebrity encourage audiences to participate in creating the narratives surrounding her?
That relationship between text, celebrity, and audience is one of the things that makes Taylor Swift and Swiftie Studies so exciting to me. The fandom is not simply consuming Swift’s work; it is constantly participating in its interpretation and, in some ways, its construction.
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Read the abstract for Orsi’s SWPACA 2026 Summer Salon paper below.
“Scholars like Stephanie Burt (2025) have pointed to the literary and lyrical genius of Taylor Swift’s narrative songwriting. Her style of songwriting draws on literary storytelling traditions that resonate with audiences across cultures and borders. Through pop songs like ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ (2025) and ‘Love Story’ (2008), Swift reimagines canonical narratives of Shakespearean women such as Ophelia and Juliet into rewritings and retellings of these literary figures on a global scale.
In Shakespeare’s tragedies, feminine figures like Ophelia and Juliet are depicted in states of grief, helplessness, and loss. Whereas Swift re-imagines and re-assigns a new fate to these women—she is able to create a narrative of survival. In this way, she does not only rewrite Shakespeare—her adaptations shift the narrative authority from male-authored literary tragedy to a woman-authored reimagined interpretation of literary possibility.
Critically, these narratives are still filtered through a framework of White, Western popular music and culture, revealing the global imbalance in which certain women have disproportionate power to define femininity and feminine empowerment on a global stage.
By using the medium of pop music, these characters are able to circulate globally far beyond their original contexts. In doing so, Swift’s adaptations of these figures reveal the limits of White feminist reimagination within current global music industries.”
If you would like to learn more about Orsi’s work, she will be participating in a School of Integrative Studies Lunch and Learn event on October 21 from 11:30am–12:30pm; there are options to attend virtually over Zoom or in person, and you can RSVP at the link.
If you would like to learn more about the Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA), they will be having a conference October 15–17 with events focused on Taylor Swift and Swift Studies; a spring symposium is also planned, with details forthcoming.