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Succeeding in the Classroom

When Emma Bare ’25 submitted her essay for LITR 211: Critical Methods of Literary Study, she couldn’t have realized that nearly six months later, she’d receive word that would be published in an international journal.  

However, thanks to her hard work and support from Professor Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, that is exactly what happened.

Emma, an English literature major from Camas, Washington, won the from the Sigma Tau Delta international English honor society. As winner, she won a monetary prize, and her essay will be published in the 2025 edition of the  Sigma Tau Delta Review.

 “I'd sit down to work for like an hour, and then an hour would stretch into two,” Bare said. “And I took a lot of time over Jan Term to kind of go over it, and then spring break, I was kind of going over it again.”

Emma, who was shy when she first came to ÃÛѨÊÓƵ, came out of her shell. Reshmi noticed Emma’s potential in classes during Emma’s first year at ÃÛѨÊÓƵ. 

“I realized very early on with Emma, that when she said things, they were very thought through and very meaningful,” Reshmi said.  “I began to notice, as a faculty member, it’s not always the student who's saying the most, but sometimes the one who really makes those meaningful contributions.”

During Emma’s sophomore year, she took LITR 354: Race, Imperialism, Justice with Reshmi. The course explores post-colonial literature and theory.  Little did Emma know that this is where her award-winning paper was born.

A Lasting Relationship

A year later, in the critical methods class, Reshmi assigned the class a project where students had to revise a past paper and apply a critical lens to it. Emma chose a paper she was proud of from LITR 354. The essay, titled, “Interrogating Torture and Surveillance in J.M. Coetzee's ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ in a Post-9/11 Space," took a critical look at the torture parallels between the book “Waiting for the Barbarians” and 9/11. She applied a post-structuralist lens to look at how torture and surveillance were portrayed in the novel.

“When I turned in the paper, Reshmi was like, ‘You should consider submitting this to the Review.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, whatever.’ Not thinking much of it, but I was like, I'll do it because I have a terrible time saying no to people,” Emma said laughing.

Within the next few months, magic happened. Working together closely, Reshmi and Emma got the essay submission ready. Reshmi helped brainstorm ideas with Emma that, she said, ultimately changed her paper into a finished, polished essay.

“She was like, ‘They don't want a standard class paper. They want something new,’” Emma said. “’They want you to talk about the book in the context of the real world.’”

So that’s exactly what Emma and Reshmi worked on. The process of editing the paper was very organized, and the faculty-student relationship evolved. 

“From my point of view, it was like, what would I do if it was a colleague,” Reshmi said. “You do that with the smartest students because it is no longer that the student is only a student. They are on the same level.”

Finally, after many revisions to her original paper, Emma submitted the essay to the journal in April 2024. 

“There is a sort of a labor of love,” Reshmi said. “I feel like her labor of love was for the writing, and my labor of love is the student-faculty relationship. If you have students who are really bright students, you want to see them take that leap.”

She learned of the award and publication of her essay in August.

Building skills for the professional world

In addition to pushing her outside her comfort zone by publishing, Reshmi also encouraged Emma to apply for leadership positions within the campus chapter of Sigma Tau Delta.

Emma currently serves as the campus chapter president, after spending a year as vice president in her junior year.

ÃÛѨÊÓƵ’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta focuses on building a presence and appreciation for the English language. They have hosted meet-and-greets with the English department faculty members and Q&As to let students know about the transferable skills that an English major can be useful for.

“Emma is one of the students who delivers,” Reshmi said. “She will be quiet, but if you give her a task, she'll meticulously carry through.”

In addition to classes for her English major and minors in critical ethnic studies and economics, Emma is co-editor of Camas, the school's literary magazine, and works in the writing center, where she helps first-year students with their writing. 

“It’s definitely taught me how to engage with students in a way that makes them better writers,” Emma said. “It’s helped with my ability to ask good questions and get people to where I think they want to go and give feedback in a way that they receive it.”

For Emma, all of her on-campus experiences have been valuable. Working in the Writing Center has taught her how to work with others when it comes to revising their work and being president of Sigma Tau Delta has given her crucial leadership experience needed for the professional world.

She believes her close relationship with Reshmi has been pivotal for her development in school and as she prepares for life after graduation.

“She's just been a great professor, a great mentor,” Emma said. “And I never came into college thinking I would get the opportunity to have this kind of relationship with someone that's going to have such an impact on my professional development.”

She hopes that the work she has done with working with other writers and editing will help her reach her ultimate goal of working as an editor for a publishing company in the future.

“The best editors to really listen. Emma really listens,” Reshmi said. “I won’t be surprised if, one of these days, that we're bringing authors of big books to ÃÛѨÊÓƵ to speak, and Emma may be behind some of those editings.”