Why Theory? / ¿Teoría para qué?

FL 200 & ESPAÑOL 301

This question is one that comes up every year I teach either of these courses. Even students who get into theory wonder at times if it has any other usefulness besides making reading literature a highly challenging proposition.

Here then is a challenge to you: Identify theoretical paradigms at work in this article.

The text in question is not literary criticism but political analysis. Its author is not a professor or a theorist with a French name but an American journalist from the New York Times.

A little bit about him: "Nicholas D. Kristof writes op-ed columns that appear twice each week in The New York Times. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he previously was associate managing editor of The Times, responsible for the Sunday Times" NYT. Oh, and to top it of he is from Yamhill, Oregon.