Matthew Parfitt - Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford Spotlight Reader

The front cover

A BEDFORD SPOTLIGHT READER

• Craig Bartholomaus,Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley
• Laurie Cella,Shippensburg University
• Robert Cummings,University of Mississippi
• Lyne Lewis Gaillet,Georgia State University
• Karen Gardiner,University of Alabama
• Christine Howell,Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley
• Samantha Looker-Koenigs,University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
• Derek Malone-France,George Washington University
• Stephanie Odom,University of Texas at Austin
• Megan ONeill,Stetson University
• Michelle Sidler,Auburn University
• Carrie Wastal,University of California, San Diego

SECOND EDITION

A BEDFORD SPOTLIGHT READER

• Matthew Parfitt
• Boston University

• Dawn Skorczewski
• Brandeis University

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ISBN 978-1-319-25880-1 (mobi)

Acknowledgments

Text acknowledgments and copyrights appear at the back of the book on , which constitute an extension of the copyright page. Art acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the art selections they cover.

The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series is a line of single-theme readers, each featuring Bedfords trademark care and quality. The readers in the series collect thoughtfully chosen readings sufficient for an entire writing course about thirty selections to allow instructors to provide carefully developed, high-quality instruction at an affordable price. Bedford Spotlight Readers are designed to help students make inquiries from multiple perspectives, opening up to critical analysis such topics such as borders, food, gender, happiness, humor, monsters, science and technology, and sustainability. An editorial board of a dozen compositionists whose programs focus on specific themes have assisted in the development of the series.

Bedford Spotlight Readers offer plenty of material for a composition course while keeping the price low. Each volume in the series includes multiple perspectives on the topic and its effects on individuals and society. Chapters are built around central questions such as What Makes People Happy? and Does Technology Make People Happier? and so offer numerous entry points for inquiry and discussion. High-interest readings, chosen for their suitability in the classroom, represent a mix of genres and disciplines as well as a choice of accessible and challenging selections to allow instructors to tailor their approach. Each chapter thus brings to light related even surprising questions and ideas.

A rich editorial apparatus provides a sound pedagogical foundation. A general introduction, chapter introductions, and headnotes supply context. Following each selection, writing prompts provide avenues of inquiry tuned to different levels of engagement, from reading comprehension (Understanding the Text), to critical analysis (Reflection and Response), to the kind of integrative analysis appropriate to the research paper (Making Connections). An appendix, Sentence Guides for Academic Writers, helps students with the most basic academic scenario: having to understand and respond to the ideas of others. This is a practical module that helps students develop an academic writing voice by giving them sentence guides, or templates, to follow in a variety of rhetorical situations and types of research conversations. The instructor resources tab of the catalog page for Pursuing Happiness offers support for teaching, with sample syllabi, additional readings, video links, and more; visit macmillanlearning.com/spotlight.

What does it mean to be happy? How do I find my own version of happiness? We all ask ourselves these questions, and we know that each of us must seek answers ourselves answers that suit our particular personalities, gifts, and circumstances. Happiness can mean anything from pure pleasure to material wealth to athletic achievement to spiritual fulfillment. These questions have particular urgency for the college students who encounter them while becoming an adult in a culture that does not offer easy answers. It might be said that no culture offers easy answers to these questions but in todays climate of ever-proliferating studies and news and manifestos about the happy life, sorting through the various theories of what makes us happy can become confusing. For this very reason, we have found them ideal questions to focus a writing course.

In the last two decades, the pursuit of happiness has become a matter of great interest, among both academic researchers and the general public, perhaps because the views of prior generations no longer seem quite right for todays rapidly changing realities. Indeed, happiness studies has become an interdisciplinary field in its own right, and new areas of happiness research have opened up in psychology, economics, sociology, neuroscience, and other disciplines.

Our writing courses on happiness have responded to recent studies of happiness published in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We have learned from positive psychologists about what happy people do. But we have also returned with our students to ancient wisdom, including Western philosophy and Eastern spiritual traditions, in order to discover perspectives on happiness that may not have figured into students education or upbringing. To take one example, the spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, has become a best-selling author in the United States by explaining how Buddhist practices can be adapted to ordinary lives in the modern world.