Published: March 14, 2017
  • Brian Catlos’s recent book Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain (Basic: 2018) has just been published in Spanish as Reinos de fe. Una nueva historia de la España musulmana by Pasado y Presente, with a prologue by leading Spanish historian, Eduardo Manzano.

    Translations to Polish, German, Korean, and Simplified and Complex Chinese.

    Brian Catlos is being given an Award for Service Excellence by the Boulder Faculty Association for his work on Mediterranean Studies and the CU Mediterranean Studies Group at CU Boulder.

  • On March 14, 2017 the University Womens’ Club Luncheon Lecture is “From Bob Dylan to Bill Gates: What Does Islam Have to do with Modern Western Culture?” Dr. Brian Catlos is a Professor of Religious Studies at CU-Boulder and is one of the world’s leading figures in the study of Mediterranean history. His work centers on Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations and ethno-religious identity in medieval Europe and the Islamic World. In 2014, he published Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith, Power and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad as well as Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom which won the Albert Hourani Book Prize, the most important award in the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies.

    Dr. Catlos will provide his historical perspective on nationalism and its application to our current national and international political climate with regard to the Middle East and Islam. He will discuss how Islam has affected Western culture including rock and roll, the game of chess, and the digital revolution. Dr. Catlos will address how medieval Spain and the Mediterranean world occupy a crucial place in the evolution of what we call “the West,” and why scholars are reconfiguring deeply rooted notions of where and how western culture originated and developed.

  • Prof. Brian Catlos has been invited to give the 5th annual Boyce Gray Lecture at Northwestern University on 26 April Sponsored by the History Department and the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, the lecture series honors the achievements of Prof. Gray Boyce, a medieval historian who served as chairman of the Department of History from 1948 to 1966. Catlos’s talk is entitled, “Foreigners in their Own Lands: The Muslims of Medieval Europe.”