We review the current theoretical picture of the crystalline and spatially disordered ("liquid") equilibrium phases of colloidal suspensions of monodisperse polystyrene spheres in polar fluids. The validity of a model of particles interacting through suitably renormalized screened coulomb interactions is explored. Theoretical predictions of the melting curve and fcc-bcc crystalline phase boundaries are presented. With the inclusion of corrections for finite sphere radius a satisfactory comparison is made between predicted and recent experimentally observed melting curves