I'm currently working on a book project, The Construction of Mediterranean Identity:  the Kingdom of Southern Italy and Sicily, c. 1000-1300.  I examine the various cultural and ethnic pieces that comprised the medieval multicultural Kingdom of southern Italy and Sicily (the 'Regno')--a place where Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Greeks, Latins, Lombards, Normans and Angevins commingled.  The diverse ethnic circumstances in the Regno fostered complex interactions in which neither conqueror nor conquered--or perhaps better to say--neither new settlers nor indigenous peoples adopted simple or consistence approaches to coexistence.  Cultural identity was peculiarly preserved:  it was encouraged, manipulated, abandoned, according to need.  This work grew out of my previous work on family strategies in the medieval Principality of Salerno.  I continue to be interested in issues of family and gender in medieval Italy.