Michael Kulikowski

Michael Kulikowski (born September 3, 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. He is a member of the Toronto School of History and a pupil of its leader Walter Goffart.

Michael Kulikowski
Born	September 3, 1970
Nationality	American
Academic background
Alma mater	Rutgers University University of Toronto
Doctoral advisor	T.D. Barnes
Academic work
Discipline	History
School or tradition	Toronto School
Institutions	University of Tennessee Pennsylvania State University
Main interests	Late Antiquity

Biography

Kulikowski is a son of English-born computer engineer Casimir Alexander Kulikowski, and a grandson of the Polish-born inventor Victor Kulikowski.[1][2] He received his B.A. (1991) from Rutgers University, and his M.A. (1992) and 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.[3] At the University of Toronto, Kulikowski was a student of Walter Goffart.[4] Among his fellow students of Goffart were Andrew Gillett.[5] After gaining his PhD, which was completed not with Walter Goffart, but with T.D. Barnes,[6] Kulikowski 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.[7] Bryan Ward-Perkins considered it a useful for students needing an introduction to the topic.[8]

Kulikowski is the author of numerous articles, which range from the dependability of the Notitia Dignitatum[9] as a historical source or ethnic self-identifications[10] 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[4][11]

Kulikowski belongs to the Toronto School of History, which is led by his former professor Walter Goffart.[7] 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.[4]

In Rome's Gothic Wars (2006), Kulikowski denies that the Goths had any history prior to the 3rd century AD.[4] He considers all earlier archaeological, linguistic and literary evidence on the Goths as completely dependent upon Getica by Jordanes, and therefore of no value.[12][13] According to Kulikowski, the Goths were mostly of non-Gothic descent, but were manipulated by the Romans into thinking that they were Goths.[4][14] Ward-Perkins disagrees with this theory, as he finds it difficult to believe that such manipulation of identity is possible.[4] Kulikowski advocates purging scholarly discourse from discussion of Germanic peoples, and replacing the term "Germanic" with "barbarian".[15][16] Kulikowski believes that the history of the Goths and other "barbarians" should be "understood entirely as a response to Roman imperialism".[3] 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".[17][18][19] Kulikowski also disagrees with Heather in the assumption that the invasion of the Huns was the primary cause of the migration period.[4] He is highly critical of the ethnogenesis model of the Vienna School of History, which he considers "a way to bring long-distance migration from the Germanic north in by the back door".[20][16] 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.[21] He considers much of what is written about Goths to be "Germanist fantasy" derived from this legacy.[22][23] He writes that Heather in particular "comes perilously close to recreating the old, volkisch notion of an inherent "Germanic" belief in freedom."[24]

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. Kulikowski 2011, p. XVIII. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFKulikowski2011 (help)
2. "Victor Kulikowski Dies At 86". Central New Jersey Home News. May 10, 1991. p. 20. Retrieved September 12, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
3. "Michael Kulikowski". Pennsylvania State University.
4. Ward-Perkins 2009, p. 296.
5. Gillett 2003, p. X.
6. Michael Kulikowski, "Coded Polemic in Ammianus Book 31 and the Date and Place of its Composition," Journal of Roman Studies 102,79–102, Abstract
7. Humphries 2007, p. 126.
8. 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."
9. Kulikowski, "The Notitia Dignitatum as an Historical Source," Historia 49 (2000):358-77
10. 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
11. Kulikowski 2006, p. 70.
12. 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."
13. 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."
14. Kulikowski 2011, p. 279. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFKulikowski2011 (help)
15. Kulikowski 2002, pp. 69-70. "The use of the term 'barbarian' is deliberate and surely non-pejorative. It is to be preferred programmatically to the noun 'German' and the adjective 'Germanic'. 'Germans' and 'Germanic peoples ' are the legacy of nineteenth-century philology."
16. Kulikowski 2012, pp. 1201-1202 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFKulikowski2012 (help). "James is clearly correct in deciding to use “barbarian” as a technical term that avoids any implications about ethnicity... This is particularly welcome given the resurgence of “Germanic” as a catch-all term for northern barbarians... [T]he dogma of barbarian ethnogenesis — first brought into English-language scholarship by Patrick Geary and now the dominant approach to the barbarians among early medievalists — is really a way to bring long-distance migration from the Germanic north in by the back door."
17. Kulikowski 2006, p. 63. "Bierbrauer’s simplistic ethnic ascription model is extreme, but only because it is articulated so clearly."
18. 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.
19. 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..."
20. Humphries 2007, p. 127.
21. Kulikowski 2006, pp. 48-49, 60-61.
22. Kulikowski 2006, p. 208.
23. Humphries 2007, p. 128.
24. Kulikowski 2011, p. 278. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFKulikowski2011 (help)

Sources

• Gillett, Andrew (2003). Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1139440039.
• Humphries, Mark (2007). "Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric". Classics Ireland. Classical Association of Ireland. 14: 126–129. JSTOR 25528487.
• Kulikowski, Michael (2002). "Nation versus Army: A Necessary Contrast". In Gillett, Andrew (ed.). On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages. ISD. pp. 69–85. ISBN 9782503511689.
• Kulikowski, Michael (2006). Rome's Gothic Wars: From the Third Century to Alaric. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1139458092.
• Kulikowski, Michael (August 8, 2011). "Peter Heather, Empires and Barbarians". Journal of Interdisciplinary History. MIT Press. 42 (2): 277–279. doi:10.1162/JINH_r_00217.
• Kulikowski, Michael (2011). Late Roman Spain and Its Cities. JHU Press. ISBN 978-0801899492.
• Kulikowski, Michael (2009). "Edward James. Europe's Barbarians, AD 200–600". The American Historical Review. American Historical Association. 115 (4): 1201–1202. doi:10.1086/ahr.115.4.1201.
• Ward-Perkins, Bryan (November 2009). ". Kulikowski, Rome's Gothic Wars from the Third Century to Alaric". Journal of Roman Studies. Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. 99: 296–297. doi:10.3815/007543509789744846.

External links

• Quotations related to Michael Kulikowski at Wikiquote
• Michael Kulikowski, University of Tennessee
• Michael Kulikowski, Penn State University