Dr. Urmilia Seshagiri, co-winner of the 2004 Margaret Church MFS Memorial Prize and recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences Junior Teaching Award
From the announcement of the Church Award: "The Editors [of Modern Fiction Studies] are pleased to announce the co-winners of the 2004 Margaret Church Memorial Prize for the best essay to appear in MFS. The Church Prize was established in 1984 in memory of Dr. Church, professor of English and comparative literature at Purdue University and a longtime editor of this journal.
The co-winners for 2004:
Urmila Seshagiri, author of "Orienting Virginia Woolf: Race, Aesthetics, and Politics in To the Lighthouse," which appeared in volume 50, issue 1 (pages 58-84)
Jonathan Boulter, author of "Does Mourning Require a Subject? Samuel Beckett's Texts for Nothing," which appeared in volume 50, issue 2 (pages 332-50)
Marianne DeKoven (Rutgers University), judge, writes, 'In their outstanding essays, Urmila Seshagiri and Jonathan Boulter both address issues of broad, urgent current concern within the crucible of detailed analysis of important literary texts. Both are wonderful writers; their essays are full of illuminating insight expressed in felicitous prose. […] Urmila Seshagiri focuses on a major Woolf text, To the Lighthouse, that, unlike Orlando and The Waves, has not as yet been central to current analyses of Woolf's complex relation to British imperialism. She demonstrates, through brilliant close readings of Woolf's use of the imagery of those quintessentially imperialist objects of British cultural cathexis, china and tea, and through highly original analysis that Woolf's ambivalent relation to imperialism is deeply embedded in the most central tropes of her greatest fiction.' "
From the Junior Faculty Teaching Award Announcement (Associate Dean Don Cox)
In the English Department one of my former roles was to review teaching of a large portion of the staff. I have reviewed and read literally hundreds of teaching evaluations. I have to say, however, that I have never seen evaluations quite like Urmilla Seshagiri's.
Stan Garner, Lindsay Young Professor and former winner of a College Senior Faculty teaching award, says this about Professor Seshagiri: "Urmilla is one of the most impressive teachers I have observed in over twenty years of conducting such observations. Her evaluation scores are dazzling, and they reflect her commitment to her students and the material she teaches. . . . Students love her, and they thrive in the atmosphere of respect she creates. One student writes: 'Her classes are not lectures; they are intellectual conversations-not just between teachers and students but among students as well.' In the words of another: 'I always tell others that she's tough, brilliant, and that her classes are the best I've taken at UT.' John Zomchick reports that when Urmilla Seshagiri taught The Colloquium, one of the hardest courses we teach, she received a perfect score of 5 from her students in the category labeled Instructor's Contribution to the Course. In short, 19 students thought that nothing more could be expected of her in this regard. "This is a remarkable achievement" says John, and I have to agree completely.