How did medieval people define themselves? And how did they balance their identities as individuals with the demands of their communities? Lives, Identities and Histories in the Central Middle Ages intertwines the study of identities with current scholarship to reveal their multi-layered, sometimes contradictory dimensions. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from legal texts to hagiographies and biblical exegesis, and diverse cultural and social approaches, this volume enriches our understanding of medieval people's identities - as defined by themselves and by others, as individuals and as members of groups and communities. It adopts a complex and wide-ranging understanding of what constituted 'identities' beyond family and regional or national belonging, such as social status, gender, age, literacy levels, and displacement. New figures and new concepts of 'identities' thus emerge from the dialogue between the chapters, through an approach based on life-histories, lived experience, ethnogenesis, theories of diaspora, cultural memory and generational change.

Anglo-Norman Studies is nothing if not wide-ranging. One opens each new volume expecting to find the unexpected - new light on old arguments, new material, new angles. MEDIUM AEVUM This year's volume continues to demonstrate the vitality of scholarship in this area, across a variety of disciplines. Topics include the forging of the Battle Abbey Chronicle; warring schoolmasters in eleventh-century Rouen; theimpact of the Conquest on England; the circulation of manuscripts between England and Normandy; and Earl Harold and the Foundation of Waltham Holy Cross. Contributors: Julie Barrau, Christopher Clark, Laura Cleaver, Stefan de Jong, Simon Keynes, Tom Licence, Brigitte Meijns, Thomas O'Donnell, Alheydis Plassman, Elisabeth Ridel, Chris Whittick, Ann Williams

This volume contains the usual wide range of topics, and offers some unusual and provocative perspectives, including an examination of what the evidence of zooarchaeology can reveal about the Conquest. The other subjects discussed are the battle of AlenAon; the impact of rebellion on Little Domesday; Lawrence of Durham; Thomas Becket; Peter of Blois; Anglo-French peace conferences; episcopal elections and the loss of Normandy; Norman identity in southern Italian chronicles; and the Normans on crusade. The contributors, from Germany, France and Denmark as well as Britain, and the United States, are RICHARD BARTON, NAOMI SYKES, LUCY MARTEN, MIA MA1/4NSTER-SWENDSEN, JOHN D. COTTS, J.E.M. BENHAM, JARG PELTZER, JULIE BARRAU, EMILY ALBU, EWAN JOHNSON, G. A. LOUD, HANNA VOLLRATH.