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History students awarded top honors for research

Three Liberty University undergraduate students and four graduate students from the Department of History received awards for their historical research during the Phi Alpha Theta’s Regional Meeting at Chowan University in Murfreesboro, N.C., on March 25.

The Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society hosts a series of regional conferences across the nation each year for history majors to present their research to their peers from other universities. Each student is given up to 20 minutes to present.

This is the 13th straight year Liberty students have participated.

This year, Liberty’s chapter was led by history professor Dr. David Snead, who also served as a panel chair for several of the presentations.

Senior Timothy Byram won Best Undergraduate Paper in U.S. History, sophomore Mitchell Gehman was awarded Best Undergraduate Paper in European History, and senior Leah Ingle was awarded second place in European History Undergraduate Paper. Graduate students Jon Bateman and Connor Schonta tied for first place for Best Graduate Paper in European History, and graduate students Jamie Weaver and Paul Hanger took first and second place, respectively, for Best Graduate Paper in U.S. History.

Byram was recognized for his research on Civil War Suffering and the Conquest of the West.

“I was really happy to receive the award,” Byram said. “There isn’t usually a large focus on intellectual or religious history in events like these, and it was nice to give those areas of history some recognition.”

Bateman, who wrote his paper on the history of Dungeons & Dragons, said he took pride in his project and in the results of his research.

“The Jerry Falwell Library is amazing, but the historiography of Dungeons & Dragons is so recent that our collection only had four books related to the subject,” said Bateman. “When the librarians weren’t able to find books that I needed, they bought the collection. I take a bit of pride in the fact that I’ve doubled the library’s collection of books on the topic.”

Bateman said he has been playing Dungeons & Dragons for five years and has written papers on popular culture before.

“It feels great to be recognized by others in the Phi Alpha Theta community for expanding the field of inquiry in our discipline,” Bateman said. “I read a lot of histories of Dungeons & Dragons while I was writing my paper, but I’ve yet to find any scholarship examining the historiography of the subject. It feels good to be adding to the ongoing conversation of historical scholarship.”

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