My interests in medieval art gravitate toward the mobile – merchants, conquerors, pilgrims, relics and portable objects – and their intersections with the immobile, or architecture, wall painting, mosaics and architectural sculpture. I have probed these intersections primarily by analyzing the dynamics of patronage in southern Italy and Sicily from circa 1050-1350. I am continually drawn to that region because of its ever-shifting relationships to both northern Europe and the diverse, contested Mediterranean basin. In the classroom, however, I focus on the larger themes probed in my research rather than on southern Italy per se. Matters of patronage and religious identity loom large in my teaching, for instance, as do the points of intersection between the Christian West and the Islamic and Byzantine worlds.