Matthew Gabriele is Professor of medieval studies and chair of the Department of Religion & Culture at Virginia Tech, USA. He is the author of An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade (2011), many articles on medieval Europe and the memory of the Middle Ages, and most recently with David M. Perry The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (2021).

General Editor's Preface, Antoinette Burton (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)

Introduction, Matthew Gabriele (Virginia Tech, USA)
1. War, Marcus Bull (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA)
2. Trade, Anne E. Lester (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
3. Natural Worlds, Vicki Szabo (Western Carolina University, USA)
4. Labor, Martha Newman (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
5. Mobility, Shayne Legassie (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA)
6. Sexuality, Patricia Skinner (Swansea University, UK)
7. Resistance, Brett Whalen (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA)
8. Race, Cord J. Whitaker (Wellesley College, USA

Notes
Further Reading
Notes on Contributors
Index

This volume explores a world that thought deeply about imperial power and emperors but one that perhaps never had an "empire" of its own. These synthetic essays from experts across a wide variety of disciplines mine the intellectual world of this period and begin to demolish the myth of the so-called "Dark Ages," showing how the European Middle Ages were illuminated by vigorous debates that echo today. The story of medieval Western empires is both familiar and foreign. It is a story about politics, culture, religion, society, gender, sex, and economics, and how porous the boundaries between those categories can often be.
A Cultural History of Western Empires in the Middle Ages offers a detailed and highly-illustrated account of how we got to where we are, as well as the dangers of not fully understanding why those origins matter.