Shukla, Miller receive Faculty of Arts Excellence Awards
Thu. Sep. 5, 2024
The Faculty of Arts has announced Dr. Shailesh Shukla and Dr. Peter Miller as the recipients of the 2024 Faculty of Arts Excellence Awards.
Dr. Shailesh Shukla, Associate Professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, is the recipient of the 2024 Faculty of Arts Excellence in Teaching Award.
The Awards Committee was particularly impressed by Dr. Shukla’s innovative teaching approach that so effectively bridges traditional Western methods and Indigenous ways of knowing, especially displayed in his Indigenous Food Security course. Through his teaching, Dr. Shukla altered his students’ intellectual world and provided them with opportunities, meaningful experiences, and skills which they can carry in their professional life. For former Indigenous Studies student, Lisa Young, who nominated him, Dr. Shukla “adopted very creative, engaging Indigenous-knowledge-focused pedagogies in the classroom.” “For Indigenous students like me,” Lisa Young adds, “it compelled us to connect with our own ways of knowing alongside with a Western social science worldview.” Current and former students all highlight his commitment to nurturing and mentoring successfully the next generation of Indigenous scholars at various stages of their academic career. According to former student Anna Neil, “Dr. Shukla has played a pivotal role in academic achievements of many Indigenous students at UW through his invaluable assistance, support, guidance, and mentorship.”
His student-centered approach and his commitment to connect the University of Winnipeg and the larger community embody what teaching excellence truly consists of. In the words of Sarah Emms, “Dr. Shukla fosters spaces of community where Indigenous values of respect, love, and community are always at the forefront. His courses create spaces where Indigenous Knowledge and Scientific knowledge can uniquely come together to foster learning, well-being and healing for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students alike.”
Dr. Peter Miller, Associate Professor in the Department of Classics, is the recipient of the 2024 Faculty of Arts Excellence in Scholarly/Creative Activity Award.
Dr. Miller was nominated for his book, Sport: Antiquity and Its Legacy, published in 2023 with Bloomsbury Publishing, as part of its Ancients and Moderns series. As fellow Classics professor Dr. Connor Whately wrote in his nominating letter, “[b]ooks in this series have to wear two hats: engage with big topics from the ancient world, like sport, but also situate that topic in the modern world, so emphasizing the manifold ways the ancient and modern worlds were connected and interrelated. But they’re also not meant to be dry, academic monographs; rather, they’re meant to appeal to a broader audience, whether that be composed of undergraduate students, faculty in other disciplines, or the wider public. Needless to say, Peter manages all this and more with aplomb in his fabulous new book.”
John A. Martino, in his Journal of Classics Teaching review, praises Dr. Miller’s “remarkable book” for its “deft control” of an “expansive topic.” The Arts Awards Committee was similarly impressed by the book’s breadth and stimulating topic—an especially relevant one, given this year’s Olympic Games. Dr. Miller provides an engaging and incisive look at sites of continuity and discontinuity between ancient Greek and Roman athletics and modern sport. These include
representations of the ideal athletic body, ancient architecture and spectacle, and classical symbols in the modern Games.
Warm congratulations to both recipients!