She seems typical enough at first glance—at least as typical as a college professor can seem. Her specialties: European and Jewish History. Her vitae: bachelor's in philosophy from Oberlin College, master's and doctoral degree in European history from The University of Chicago. Impressive credentials indeed.

So why do you get the sense there's something she's not telling you, especially if you're one of her students? It's not that she's hiding anything. Maybe you're just not asking the right questions. When you do, she breaks down and confesses.

"I was the living nightmare of every parent of a liberal arts graduate. I was lost, kind of hanging around — I was a deadhead."

After graduating from Oberlin, and not quite sure of her direction, Leff spent a year working at a map store in Minneapolis and going on the road with the Grateful Dead. "I'm not sure how I'd feel if my child just got an $80,000 education and decided to go to concerts for a year."

It's not that she didn't take her education seriously. In fact, it was quite the opposite. She went to Oberlin because she wanted to be a part of student culture that was "engaged and committed to learning."

That's what finally led her back to graduate school, and then into teaching. This past school year was her first as a professor, and it was a rough one. For starters, it was a new job at a new school in a new state. She also spent the year living 2,000 miles from her husband, Ben, who had committed to a clerkship in Boston after graduating from Yale Law School. "I was really psyched to get the position at Southwestern," she says. "I wanted to teach somewhere small, like Oberlin. It was a perfect fit, except for the long-distance marriage. We commuted a bunch."

As soon as the spring semester was complete, she packed for a summer in the Northeast, where she currently is doing research and spending lots of time with Ben. Things will get back to normal this fall when they both move back to Austin, where he has a job waiting as tax attorney at the law firm of Vinson & Elkins.

Leff has been impressed with the quality of students she's seen so far at Southwestern. "When discussing European history, you're dealing with material written in a different language a long time ago. It's like being a detective. You have to fit different pieces together in order to understand. There are times that I have to stand back and let students struggle with that and encourage them to be engaged. They have been willing to try new things and entertain ideas that never occurred to them before."

"Studying history is a way of making the world seem less normal, a way to defamiliarize yourself—like traveling. You are forced to recognize the things you take for granted. That creates possibilities to consider what would be the best possible world in which to live."

Leff has always liked to travel. She and Ben spent a recent summer in Israel. She researched while he clerked on an Israeli court. Most of her travel, though, has been in Europe. Because her mother is a French historian, her family traveled to France several times when she was young. She returned there to study abroad in high school, college and graduate school. "The great thing about studying European history is you always have a reason to go back."