An Immersive Approach

Learning that scholarly work goes hand-in-hand with having a creative practice was transformational for Leah Flax Barber ’18. 

The comparative literature and German double major started cultivating this approach as a first-year student at Oberlin.

Encouraged by a professor to discover what it means to establish a lyric practice in the 21st century, she started writing longhand in composition notebooks. 

Years later, she followed this same method when shaping her first volume of poetry, 2025’s The Mirror of Simple Souls, while earning an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Throughout the collection, the tension between freedom and constraint is a thematic thread. Barber positions a pair of interests—theatre and mysticism—in conversation with one another. For example, Barber resurrects Columbina, an actress figure of the commedia dell’arte, as a vehicle for understanding her own destiny as a soon-to-be historical subject. 

“The fragmentary return of historical forms in others is woven throughout my work,” Barber says.

The title, which is taken from an early 14th-century text also called The Mirror of Simple Souls by the French author Marguerite Porete, reveals her affinity for lenses, or breaking down ways of seeing. 

It the titular poem, Barber suggests:  

That a book is a mirror
It cures the soul of its complication
By manipulating its reflection
Or revealing it

A Chicago native, Barber chose Oberlin for its emphasis on the arts and remembers being fully immersed in her college experience: reading German plays, attending TIMARA concerts, and studying away in Berlin. 

“I had boundless curiosity and excitement for learning while at Oberlin,” says Barber, who credits multiple mentors with helping her cultivate creativity and contemplate the responsibility of the poet in the world.

Working closely with John “Jed” Erickson Deppman, the late Irvin E. Houck Professor of Comparative Literature and English, further deepened Barber’s understanding of life and the world around her. Professor of Comparative Literature Stiliana Milkova, meanwhile, taught her to respond to the intertextuality of literature.

Barber’s passion for working with first-year students, and paying forward the very guidance she received as an undergrad, endures in her post-Oberlin work. She received the inaugural Peggy Woods Award for Innovative Teaching from the UMass-Amherst Writing Program in 2023 and was later selected for the university’s 2023-24 Instructional Innovation Fellowship.

“I have always enjoyed the freedom to focus on the work,” she says. “I never felt like teaching took away from my art.” 

Last year, a lifelong love of learning landed her back in the classroom at the University of Chicago Law School, where she is a Rubenstein Scholar and focuses on child advocacy. 

“I work for the Juvenile and Criminal Justice Clinic, which provides pro bono representation to young people who are accused of delinquency or crime, as well as to individuals who were convicted as youth and are now serving extreme sentences,” Barber says. “I also have scholarly interests in Roman law and early Christianity which I am exploring in classes in the law school and also the university’s divinity school.”

Meanwhile, The Mirror of Souls has received praise from the Harvard Review and Bomb magazine. With loose structural parameters, the poet’s daily practice continues—although she no longer numbers her notebooks. 

In retrospect, the principle takeaway from Barber’s time at Oberlin endures: “Being an artist can be complementary  to everything in one’s life.”