Students at Rutgers University will have a new excuse to digress from boring homework assignments and tedious term papers to watch Beyoncé videos now that a course dedicated to the mega star is in session.

Starting on Wednesday, Rutgers students began earning college credit in a new summer course titled "Feminist Perspectives: Politicizing Beyoncé," which is part of the school's Women's and Gender Studies Department.

Led by doctoral student Kevin Allred, the class focuses on how the 32-year-old diva uses her celebrity and female-empowering lyrics as a medium to tackle complicated sexual and gender politics. The course covers the evolution of Beyoncé to Sasha Fierce to Queen Bey, with a particular emphasis on how she balances her role as a sex symbol with motherhood and monogamy.

"She's the most powerful black woman in entertainment and pop culture," Allred told the New York Daily News. "She's gotten more confrontational and more explicit when she's talking about beauty and gender."

Although Allred admits that he is a Beyoncé fan, he plans to juxtapose the pop icon with literature from famed black-feminist writers Octavia Butler and bell hooks.

"I want my students to become more conscious of pop culture and what they're consuming every day," Allred says. "I hope people begin to appreciate what Beyoncé is doing in terms of feminism and what she represents for race and gender."

While Rutgers may be the first university to use Beyoncé as an academic muse, it isn't the only college to base a sociology or pop culture course on a celebrity.

On Tuesday, students at Skidmore College in upstate New York began studying "The Sociology of Miley Cyrus," which focuses on the former child star turned pop provocateur.

Professors at both institutions insist that the incorporating the singers into the courses provides students with a modern twist on issues in race, gender and sexuality.

Carolyn Chernoff, an assistant professor who is running the program on Miley Cyrus, described the "Wrecking Ball" singer as a "useful primary document" since she began her career as Disney's Hannah Montana and later became a controversial adult star known for pushing the envelope.

"She's a really interesting case study for how someone can represent sex and gender while maturing in the public eye," she said, according to The Telegraph. "Miley is a work in progress, but you can already see such a complex narrative of how people talk about her unbridled sexuality."