Faculty and Staff
Ralph W. Mathisen
Professor of History
RALPH W. MATHISEN received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1979 and is the History Department’s ancient historian. He is a specialist in the society, culture, and religion of Late Antiquity, and, along with Western Civilization, he teaches Roman and Byzantine History. He is Director of the Biographical Database for Late Antiquity Project, a Fellow of the American Numismatic Society, and Editor of the Journal of Late Antiquity and Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity. He currently is working on books on “How the Barbarians Saved Classical Civilization: Barbarian Intellectuals in Late Antiquity”; the late Roman comedy “The Querolus”; and the life and letters of Desiderius of Cahors. He has authored or edited ten books, including People, Personal Expression, and Social Relations in Late, 2 vols. (Univ. of Michigan, 2003); Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul. Revisiting the Sources (Ashgate, 2001) (with D.R. Shanzer); Law, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford Univ. Press, 2001); and Ruricius of Limoges and Friends: A Collection of Letters from Visigothic Aquitania (Liverpool Univ. Press, 1999), and is a co-author of Making Europe: People, Politics and Culture (Houghton Mifflin, 2008). He has published over 70 scholarly book chapters and journal articles, including "Peregrini, Barbari, and Cives Romani: Concepts of Citizenship and The Legal Identity of Barbarians in the Later Roman Empire," American Historical Review 111(2006), 1011-1040; "Violent Behavior and the Construction of Barbarian Identity in Late Antiquity," H. Drake, ed., Violence in Late Antiquity (Ashgate, 2006), 27-35; "Bishops, Barbarians, and the 'Dark Ages': The Fate of Late Roman Educational Institutions in Early Medieval Gaul," in R. Begley, J. Koterski, eds., Medieval Education (Fordham Univ. Press, 2005), 1-27; "Adnotatio and petitio: The Emperor's Favor and Special Exceptions in Early Byzantine Law," in D. Feissel ed., La pétition à Byzance (Paris, 2004), 23-32; "The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," in Av. Cameron ed., Fifty Years of Prosopography. The Later Roman Empire, Byzantium, and Beyond (British Academy/Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), 23-40; part/all of 2 maps in R. Talbert, ed., Barrington Atlas of the Green and Roman World (Princeton, 2000); "Clovis, Anastase, et Grégoire de Tours: Consul, patrice et roi," in M. Rouche, ed., Clovis, le Romain, le chrétien, l'Européen (Paris, 1998) 395-407; and "Barbarian Bishops and the Churches 'in barbaricis gentibus' during Late Antiquity," Speculum 72 (1997) 664-697.