The department is delighted to welcome Dr. Travis Bruce as its new Medievalist.  Before joining the History Department, he most recently worked for the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in France on a project entitled “Imperial Government and Authority in Medieval Western Islam.” Dr. Bruce will continue to collaborate with the project team analyzing documents from the Almohad chancellery, and their current work focuses on Almohad relations with the Italian port of Pisa. His dissertation from the Université de Toulouse is being published at the end of the year by the CNRS under the title La Taifa de Denia et la Méditerranée au XIe siècle, and Brill is publishing his translation of Governing the Empire: Provincial Administration in the Almohad Caliphate in early 2013. Dr. Bruce is working on a new manuscript based on his 2010 dissertation entitled Rethinking the Medieval Mediterranean and the Islamic Maritime State: The Case of the Taifa of Denia. He has also contributed book reviews this year to the Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques and Medieval Encounters. Dr. Bruce will be teaching courses on world, medieval, and Islamic history.