Michael Kulikowski

Michael Kulikowski (born 1970) is an American historian. He is Professor of History and Classics and Head of the History Department at Pennsylvania State University. Kulikowski specializes in the history of the western Mediterranean world of late antiquity.

Biography

Kulikowski received his B.A. (1991) from Rutgers University, and his M.A. (1992), his Ph.D. (1998) from the University of Toronto. He also gained a Licentiate of Mediaeval Studies (canon law) from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in 1995.[1] At the University of Toronto, Kulikowski was a student of Walter Goffart.[2] He subsequently taught at Washington and Lee University, Smith College, and the University of Tennessee. Since 2009, Kulikowski has been Professor of History and Classics and Head of the History Department at Pennsylvania State University.

Kulikowski's first book, Late Roman Spain and Its Cities, was published in 2004. He next work, Rome's Gothic Wars, was published in 2006, and is an introductory textbook on the relations between Goths and the Roman Empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD.[3] Bryan Ward-Perkins considered it a useful for students needing an introduction to the topic.[4]

Kulikowski is the author of numerous articles, which range from the dependability of the Notitia Dignitatum[5] as a historical source or ethnic self-identifications[6] to examination of the careers of various late Roman individuals. He is the editor of the forthcoming Landmark Ammianus Marcellinus.

Theories
Certainly, in time, after being told repeatedly that they were in fact Goths... was [there] no question in anyone’s mind that they were indeed Goths.

- Michael Kulikowski[2][7]

Kulikowski belongs to the Toronto School of History, which is led by his former professor Walter Goffart.[3] Kulikowski's views are closely in line with Goffart, who rejects the idea that Germanic peoples had any early history or that Germanic migrations had any impact on the fall of the Western Roman Empire.[2]

In Rome's Gothic Wars (2006), Kulikowski argues against any supposed pre-Danubian history or identity of the Goths.[2] He considers all pre-Danubian archaeological, linguistic and literary evidence on the Goths as completely dependent upon Getica by Jordanes, and therefore of little value.[8][9] Instead, Kulikowski suggests that Gothic identity was invented by the Roman Empire in the 3rd century AD for its own political gain and then imposed upon the diverse peoples of the Danube.[2] Ward-Perkins disagrees with this theory, as he finds it difficult to believe that such manipulation of identity is possible.[2] Kulikowski believes that the history of the Goths and other "barbarians" should be "understood entirely as a response to Roman imperialism".[1] He labels previous works on the Goths by Peter Heather, Herwig Wolfram, Volker Bierbrauer as "extreme", "neo-romantic", "bizarre" and "outlandish", and believes they "lack theoretical rigour".[10][11][12] Kulikowski also disagrees with Heather in the assumption that the invasion of the Huns was the primary cause of the migration period.[2] He is highly critical of the ethnogenesis model of the Vienna School of History.[13] Kulikowski charges that German nationalist and Nazi influences have permeated scholarship on the Goths up to the present day, particularly through the theories of Gustav Kossinna.[14] He considers much of what is written about Goths to be "Germanist fantasy" derived from this legacy.[15][16]

Selected works
  • Late Roman Spain and Its Cities, 2004
  • Rome's Gothic Wars', 2006
  • The Triumph of Empire, 2016
  • The Tragedy of Empire, 2019

References
  1. "Michael Kulikowski". Pennsylvania State University.
  2. Ward-Perkins 2009, p. 296.
  3. Humphries 2007, p. 126.
  4. Ward-Perkins 2009, p. 126. "For the most part, this is a sensible, clear and uncontroversial introduction to the subject, which deserves to be included on any student reading-list."
  5. Kulikowski, "The Notitia Dignitatum as an Historical Source," Historia 49 (2000):358-77
  6. Kulikowski, "Roman Identity and the Visigothic Settlement in Gaul," in R.W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer, edd., Culture and Society in Late Antique Gaul (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishers) 2001:26-38
  7. Kulikowski 2006, p. 70.
  8. Kulikowski 2006, p. 43. "[O]ne can find it stated that written sources, archaeology, and linguistic evidence all demonstrate that just such a migration took place, if not out of Scandinavia then at least out of Poland. In fact, there is just a single source for this extended story of Gothic migration, the Getica of Jordanes."
  9. Kulikowski 2006, pp. 67, 212. "It is only the text of Jordanes that leads scholars to privilege the Wielbark connection... The Gotones mentioned in Tacitus, Germania 44.1 and located somewhere in what is now modern Poland would not be regarded as Goths if Jordanes’ migration stories did not exist."
  10. Kulikowski 2006, p. 63. "Bierbrauer’s simplistic ethnic ascription model is extreme, but only because it is articulated so clearly."
  11. Kulikowski 2006, pp. 206, 208. "Peter Heather’s Goths and Romans, 332–489 (Oxford, 1991) is the best treatment of its subject available in any language... Unfortunately, Heather’s more recent works... [advocate a] neo-Romantic vision of mass migrations of free Germanic peoples... [Heather] lack[s] theoretical rigour in relating archaeological and historical evidence.
  12. Kulikowski 2006, p. 206. "Herwig Wolfram’s History of the Goths... is the most widely available. Its mixture of outlandish philological speculation, faulty documentation, and oracular pronouncement remains very influential. Less bizarre, if wholly derivative, accounts of ethnogenesis are available in works by Wolfram’s Anglophone apostles..."
  13. Humphries 2007, p. 127.
  14. Kulikowski 2006, pp. 48-49, 60-61.
  15. Kulikowski 2006, p. 208.
  16. Humphries 2007, p. 128.

Sources
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