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Associate Professor of Classics Zsuzsanna V\u00e1rhelyi first became interested in history when she found herself in the middle of it. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, V\u00e1rhelyi was living in communist Hungary, and she recognized the impact of the moment. \u201cIt really brought home how much people’s lives are shaped by history,\u201d she says, \u201cIt was a very exciting time.\u201d When the historical archives opened up, V\u00e1rhelyi became increasingly fascinated with the new information available about time under communist rule. This interest in history led V\u00e1rhelyi to major in both history and English while in college, where she discovered a particular love for ancient Rome. \u201cBecause of how the coursework was structured, I started in the ancient world\u2026I guess I never got beyond that,\u201d she jokes. Fascinated by the number of texts that survived the Roman Empire and the range of thought they represent, V\u00e1rhelyi went on to earn her doctorate in history from Columbia University. Since then, V\u00e1rhelyi has looked into such topics as the good life and trauma in ancient Rome.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What does it mean to lead a good life? That\u2019s one of the questions V\u00e1rhelyi pushes students to ask, looking back to the ancient world for possible answers. For the past five years, she has taught a class students refer to as \u201cthe happiness class,\u201d but V\u00e1rhelyi clarifies that \u201cIt is not a happiness class\u2014It’s a good life class.\u201d The course uses texts from ancient thinkers to consider questions about what people can do today to lead a life that won\u2019t bring suffering to themselves or to others. V\u00e1rhelyi was inspired by the recent surge of interest in good living and the different influences affecting the topic, noting that \u201cI signed up for a few listservs about good life areas, and the amount of junk I gather around how to be more productive is absolutely outrageous.\u201d<\/span> In approaching these questions from a humanistic angle, V\u00e1rhelyi hopes to combat today\u2019s more superficial views of what it means to live a good life. V\u00e1rhelyi also recognizes the specific<\/span> challenges students face today. \u201cI understand why you might say, like, why bother? But I think that’s also something we have to think about: what your life would be like if your motto is, \u2018why bother.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n V\u00e1relhyi also finds value in bringing similar questions about quality of life into scholarly discussions of the ancient world, engaging with the newer field of trauma studies. \u201cGreece and Rome were valorized for being so successful militarily. It\u2019s a very particular reading of the past,\u201d V\u00e1rhelyi acknowledges. \u201cThe idea that soldiers could be traumatized in the ancient world at first was unacceptable to a number of people,\u201d says V\u00e1rhelyi. While she doesn\u2019t attempt to diagnose people from historical eras, V\u00e1rhelyi says she thinks, \u201cit does entail deeply humanist commitment to human flourishing to ask these questions.\u201d Wanting a fuller picture of the different impacts of trauma, V\u00e1rhelyi received a Master\u2019s degree from the BU School of Social Work in the trauma specialization while a professor. \u201cTrauma is a very complex process, and there’s so many things we don\u2019t know about humans, despite the fact that we know a lot,\u201d she says . Using this new knowledge, V\u00e1rhelyi saw the many unique ways trauma studies could contribute to conversations about both ancient Rome and the way we process information and experiences in the modern day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not that easy to be a human,\u201d V\u00e1rhelyi says, \u201cAnd in particular, it doesn’t seem to be that easy at this particular historical moment.\u201d She hopes to help the BU community approach these challenges as she begins her three-and-a-half-year appointment to the <\/span>National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship<\/span><\/a> this January, and she has big plans to expand the reach of the humanities at BU. \u201cIt’s not just the humanities, or people in the humanities who struggle with some of these questions. And it’s nice to see that, in fact, these questions can take us to places that might seem like politics, or consulting, or healthcare,\u201d says V\u00e1rhelyi. Drawing on the past <\/span>public humanities undergraduate fellowship program<\/span><\/a>, V\u00e1rheyi hopes to expand the number of internships across fields and host events that bring people together to tackle big questions about life\u2019s purpose. \u201cThe last time I checked, there’s no way to check out from being human yet,\u201d she says, \u201cIf these questions don’t hit you at 18, they might hit you at 28 or 38.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n These new initiatives will promote community both within the humanities and encourage people outside of the humanities to engage with humanistic questions in new ways. V\u00e1rhelyi identifies her colleagues and broader scholarly community as helping her to grow in her thinking, and she hopes to bring that type of community to a more public setting. \u201cI feel that one of the obligations of the NEH professor is to keep the fire alive and gather people around the fire and say, \u2018Okay, let’s see how we can best do this,\u2019\u201d V\u00e1rhelyi reflects. In bringing people together, V\u00e1rhelyi hopes to nudge all of us one step closer to understanding the good life.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Associate Professor of Classics Zsuzsanna V\u00e1rhelyi first became interested in history when she found herself in the middle of it. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, V\u00e1rhelyi was living in communist Hungary, and she recognized the impact of the moment. \u201cIt really brought home how much people’s lives are shaped by history,\u201d she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20263,"featured_media":21776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[401,398,400],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21775"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21890,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21775\/revisions\/21890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}