This course/seminar examines the emergence of continental Europe as a unified political entity under the Carolingian rulers of the eighth and ninth centuries. Our aim is to understand the challenges faced by the Carolingians as they sought to unify under the aegis of empire the culturally diverse and often politically recalcitrant regions of Europe they attempted to control. The course/seminar also seeks to evaluate the cultural achievements of the Carolingian "renaissance" in the context of the history of education and literary culture in Western Europe. The emphasis of the course/seminar is upon the close reading of different primary sources of the period with a view to understanding the interpretative problems involved in using different types of evidence. An overall goal of the course is to assess the effect of Carolingian political and social institutions on the historical development of Europe