What does it mean to be happy, and who gets to decide? How do we learn what happiness is supposed to look like? Why are some lives celebrated as happy while others are treated as problems?

This course introduces critical reading and writing as essential skills for engaging with contemporary sociocultural issues, with a particular focus on happiness as its key problematic. Drawing on methods from literary and cultural studies, this course approaches happiness not as a self-evident good but as a normative ideal that shapes our sense of self and belonging. Together, we will examine how happiness becomes attached to particular ways of living and what cultural work the language of the “good life” performs. Emphasizing humanities-based inquiry, this course helps students develop strong critical reading and writing skills while encouraging them to question taken-for-granted values and imagine otherwise.