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6 Lenses to Analyze Any Text Through

Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Audrey Thorne
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Harvard chapter.

The hardest part of writing an essay is starting it. The easiest way to spark a new idea is to look at the text through a specific lense. Here are 6 lenses I find particularly useful, enlightening, and interesting. 

 

Feminist theory Text to look at: Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

 

Queer theory

Text to look at: Brown has compiled a list of potentially helpful, intersectional queer theory.

 

Cognitive frameworks

Text to look at: “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Pol- icy Coordination” by Peter Haas

 

Dream theory

Text to look at: Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud both have good, extensive theories that can be applied to dreams.

 

Pronoun Use

Text to look at: The Secret Life of Pronouns by James Pennebaker

 

Path Dependence

Text to look at: “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics” by Paul Pierson

 

 

 

 

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Audrey Thorne

Harvard '19

Audrey is a Senior in Pforzheimer house. She likes writing, adventure, Tatte, and doing things ironically it's no longer ironic. She's also Co-Campus Coordinator of the Her Campus Harvard branch.