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Professor Brian Catlos Wins 2016 Innovative Seed Grant for Mediterranean Studies

Mediterranean Studies is an emerging interdisciplinary field that draws on methodologies and perspectives taken from across the humanities, social sciences and the arts, and a research-driven response to the Eurocentric tendencies that continue to warp scholarship regarding the emergence and character of the West and Modernity. It situates the Mediterranean at the center of the historical and cultural processes which shaped the western world from per-history through the Early Modern, and serves as a comparative and regional frame for analyzing questions relating to culture, economics and politics up to the present. An approach that combines European, African and West Asian history, and focuses on ethno-religious identity and communal relations (especially, Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations) it offers a perspective that not only reflects better the historical processes in question, but also our evolving student and faculty bodies and larger community. 

Brian Catlos (RLST) co-directs the largest and most successful Mediterranean Studies venture, the Mediterranean Seminar (), a forum with over 1,000 participants worldwide based at the University of California, and which organizes conferences and workshops and manages collaborations across North America, Europe and the Mediterranean.

This year’s Innovative Seed Grant will enable the CU Mediterranean Studies Group – which benefits from the support from departments across our campus – to become established as a formal Initiative at CU Boulder, and with commitment from the College and University, establish a Center that will serve as the new home to the Mediterranean Seminar and make CU Boulder the leader in this transformative new scholarly culture.

It will help to fund the Group’s robust slate of workshops and visiting scholars here at CU Boulder and provide support for faculty and graduate students to attend our workshops held across North America.

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