Hans Hummer was born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas. He completed his doctorate at UCLA in 1997, and in 1999 he joined the history faculty at Wayne State University, where he teaches medieval European and world history. He has published articles on the political and social history of early medieval Europe in Deutsches Archiv, Early Medieval Europe, and Francia. In 2007 the Society for French Historical Studies recognized his book Politics and Power in Early Medieval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish Realm 600-1000 with the David Pinkney Award, granted annually to the most distinguished book in French history published by a North American scholar.

Visions of Kinship makes an important intervention in the field, and Hummer has succeeded in writing a book that will challenge many readers' preconceptions about kinship in the Middle Ages and what it did and did not mean to contemporaries.

• Introduction Part I: Unwinding 1: The Modernity of Kinship 2: Germanist Scholarship and the Kinship Enterprise 3: Disambiguation in the Twentieth Century Part II: Rewinding 4: The Made and the Given, the Carnal and the Spiritual 5: Kinship in the City Part III: Revealing 6: The Sanctity of Kinship 7: 'More Noble by Sanctity' 8: The Nature of Things 9: Families in Trust 10: 'The Genealogical Unity of Mankind' Conclusion: The Magic of Kinship Bibliography Index

Hans Hummer was born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas. He completed his doctorate at UCLA in 1997, and in 1999 he joined the history faculty at Wayne State University, where he teaches medieval European and world history. He has published articles on the political and social history of early medieval Europe in Deutsches Archiv, Early Medieval Europe, and Francia. In 2007 the Society for French Historical Studies recognized his book Politics and Power in Early Medieval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish Realm 600-1000 with the David Pinkney Award, granted annually to the most distinguished book in French history published by a North American scholar.

Visions of Kinship makes an important intervention in the field, and Hummer has succeeded in writing a book that will challenge many readers' preconceptions about kinship in the Middle Ages and what it did and did not mean to contemporaries.

• Introduction Part I: Unwinding 1: The Modernity of Kinship 2: Germanist Scholarship and the Kinship Enterprise 3: Disambiguation in the Twentieth Century Part II: Rewinding 4: The Made and the Given, the Carnal and the Spiritual 5: Kinship in the City Part III: Revealing 6: The Sanctity of Kinship 7: 'More Noble by Sanctity' 8: The Nature of Things 9: Families in Trust 10: 'The Genealogical Unity of Mankind' Conclusion: The Magic of Kinship Bibliography Index

Hans Hummer was born in Oklahoma and raised in Kansas. He completed his doctorate at UCLA in 1997, and in 1999 he joined the history faculty at Wayne State University, where he teaches medieval European and world history. He has published articles on the political and social history of early medieval Europe in Deutsches Archiv, Early Medieval Europe, and Francia. In 2007 the Society for French Historical Studies recognized his book Politics and Power in Early Medieval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish Realm 600-1000 with the David Pinkney Award, granted annually to the most distinguished book in French history published by a North American scholar.

Visions of Kinship makes an important intervention in the field, and Hummer has succeeded in writing a book that will challenge many readers' preconceptions about kinship in the Middle Ages and what it did and did not mean to contemporaries.

• Introduction Part I: Unwinding 1: The Modernity of Kinship 2: Germanist Scholarship and the Kinship Enterprise 3: Disambiguation in the Twentieth Century Part II: Rewinding 4: The Made and the Given, the Carnal and the Spiritual 5: Kinship in the City Part III: Revealing 6: The Sanctity of Kinship 7: 'More Noble by Sanctity' 8: The Nature of Things 9: Families in Trust 10: 'The Genealogical Unity of Mankind' Conclusion: The Magic of Kinship Bibliography Index