Happiness Unit Homework and Assignments
Homework for Wednesday, October 6
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Download, print, and read Daniel Gilbert's chapter "Reporting Live from Tomorrow" from his
book Stumbling on Happiness (available on the Resources page).
Answer the following questions (devote about a paragraph to each):
1.
2.
3.
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What's Gilbert claiming or arguing for in this text?
What strikes you as you read this? (What seems interesting or important or provocative or surprising?)
What do you want to know more about?
Homework for Friday, October 8
Download, print, and read Jennifer Senior's "All Joy and No Fun" (available on the Resources page).
Answer the following questions.
1.
2.
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What are the different types of happiness being suggested here? How might you name and define them?
Is her writing good? What makes it good (or bad)? Be as specific as you can.
Homework for Wednesday, October 13
Look over the suggestions listed on your Assignment II handout.
Find at least three scholarly sources (from at least two different disciplines) that might be useful in your
paper.
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1.
2.
3.
For each source:
Write the Work Cited information in MLA format (use your Hacker handbook as a guide).
Copy a representative or useful quote from the source.
Write one paragraph that briefly summarizes the source.
4.
Write one paragraph that indicates how you plan to use the source in your essay.
Homework for Friday, October 15
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Start working on putting together your happiness paper draft. See if you can get at least two pages of it
written.
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Print out whatever you've completed and bring it to class on Friday
ASSIGNMENT II
Skill:
Examining a Concept from the Perspective of Multiple Disciplines
Topic: Defining, Describing, Measuring, and Pursuing Happiness
Sources: Gilbert, Senior (download these from class website) + your own research
Draft: (5 pp., double spaced) due Monday, October 18 in class [4 copies]
Revision: (6 pp., dbl. spaced) due Monday, November 1 in class [+ draft with my
comments]
In your last essay, you analyzed the concepts of several authors in order to create
and define your own concept and prescription for education. Now, in your second
essay, you'll examine the different ways a concept is framed by different disciplines.
In so doing, you’ll also need to be reflective in discussing your own personal
experience with the topic. Scholarly disciplines often have entrenched ways of
looking at a topic, but writers can often break new ground by observing and
analyzing the way different disciplines frame a topic. That will be your goal in this
essay.
The concept you'll examine is happiness. We’ll read an essay by happiness
researcher and writer Daniel Gilbert to start feeling our way into the concept. We’ll
also read an essay by journalist Jennifer Senior to both provide a new perspective
on the concept and to provide an example of what a writer working with different
types of sources can do. You’ll then need to spend some time working on finding
your own examples (use the Suggestions on the other side of this page to get you
started) and making them speak to each other and to Gilbert/Senior—as well as
your own experience.
The query that your essay will answer is not as narrowly defined it was in the
previous assignment. Instead, you’ll want to choose one (or possibly more) of the
following queries to address in your essay: What is happiness? How can happiness
be attained? How can happiness be measured? Should happiness be a goal in life?
You will not want to say the obvious, but to find an interesting angle and claim to
stake about happiness that might surprise or educate your readers.
Draft, due in class on Monday, October 18:
Senior makes a number of writerly moves in her essay, among them:
a. She strategically uses personal anecdotes to engage the reader and explore her
concept.
b. She uses well-chosen and carefully summarized research to deepen and enrich
her concept.
c. She chooses striking and apt quotations to examine her concept and punctuate her
points.
In your five-page draft, you will work on making these writerly moves, but on a
smaller scale (since your essay is shorter than hers). Like Senior, you'll want to
move back and forth between anecdote, reflection, and source use so that you can
explore the concept of happiness. Like her, you'll be pursuing a certain perspective
or angle on happiness, and, like her, you'll want your essay to engage your reader
along a path of inquiry that brings in different kinds of voices to help you answer the
query you decide to pursue. Your essay will need to refer to at least two different
kinds of scholarly sources (see Suggestions on the reverse of this page).
Bring FOUR COPIES of your draft, stapled, to class on the due date.
Suggestions for Disciplines that Discuss Happiness
1. Positive psychology (You might look into The University of Pennsylvania’s
Positive Psychology Center, the researcher Martin Seligman, or the Journal of
Positive Psychology.)
2. Philosophy (Some examples include Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and
Nietzche’s Twilight of the Idols, but there are many, many more.)
3. Religion (Most religious texts speak of the path to happiness—but make sure
to tread carefully when dealing with religious texts. You might also look into
theological academic journals.)
4. Economics (Andrew Oswald wrote an easy-to-read introduction to the
economics of happiness, and many others have looked at happiness from an
economic perspective.)
5. Politics (Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson included the phrase
“the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. In the past
decade, the country of Bhutan has made “gross national happiness”—as
opposed to “gross national product”—their country’s goal.)
You might also find it useful to examine the way some non-academic sources
address happiness, such as song lyrics, self-help books, pop-culture magazines, etc.
Homework for Wednesday, October 20
Write a one-page peer response letter to each of the other members of your peer response group. You can feel
free to mention anything that seems pertinent in that letter (with the caveat of focusing on conceptual issues rather
than mechanical issues at this stage). However, your response should include at least 5 "devil's advocate"
questions or comments -- that is, questions or comments in which you challenge the concept of the paper you're
reading from different perspectives.
Homework for Friday, October 22
Use your Rules for Writers handbook by Diana Hacker to help you build a Works Cited page for your essay in MLA
format. Include all the sources that you use in your paper -- make sure to include Gilbert's and Senior's texts as
well.
You should have all the information you need to cite Senior. To cite Gilbert--in addition to the author, title, and
page numbers (which you know)--you'll also need to know that it appeared in the anthology called Emerging:
Contemporary Readings for Writers by Barclay Barrios. This anthology was published by Bedford/St. Martin's,
which is based in Boston, in 2009.
Print your Works Cited page and bring it to class on Friday.
Your revision of assignment II is due Monday, November 1: Remember to bring your revision, your draft
with my comments, and the responses you got from your peers.
A number of the handouts that we've looked at in class thus far -- such as "Concept Boot Camp" and "Bust a
Move" -- are available here.