Michael Kulikowski

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.

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]

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

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