Liberty Professor wins 2008 Top Article Award

Dr. Michael Graves, Liberty University professor of Communications, received the 2008 Top Article Award from the Religious Communication Association for his article, “Travelers Here in this Vale of Tears: William Penn Preaches a Funeral Sermon.”

Graves has served with Liberty’s Department of Communications since fall 2004. He completed his B.A., and M.A., degrees in speech communication at California State University at Los Angeles, and his Ph.D. in speech communication at the University of Southern California in 1972.

Before coming to Liberty, Graves taught at Azusa Pacific University. He also chaired the Division of Communication and Literature at George Fox University, served as the department chair and associate dean for academics in the School of Communication and the Arts and directed more than 20 doctoral dissertations, three of which won national awards.

Graves has published more than 30 essays and reviews in scholarly journals. He co-edited the book “More than Precious Memories: The Rhetoric of Southern Gospel Music,” and received the 2005 Ray and Pat Brown Award from the Popular Culture Association for the best edited book in Popular Culture Studies.

The Religious Communication Association (RCA) is an academic society founded in 1973 by people interested in the study of all aspects of public religious communication. Among its members are teachers, students, clergy, broadcasters and other scholars and professionals who share a common interest in religious speech, media, performance and other communication. It is nonsectarian, striving to provide a setting in which persons of various faiths, or no faith, can study the problems of communication and religion.