Massimiliano Vitiello (he/him)

Biography

Professor Vitiello is an historian of ancient history, Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the early Middle Ages, with an emphasis in Roman history. He specializes in the history of the late Roman Empire and the transformation of the Mediterranean World, and also works on classical philology, historiography, epigraphy, numismatics and the material culture of the classical world. He teaches a range of courses on ancient Greece and Rome, Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. He is also an affiliated faculty member in the classics program. Dr. Vitiello is the M.A. program advisor for the history department and a faculty member in the Humanities Consortium.

Dr. Vitiello was born in Rome, Italy. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Messina in Sicily in 2001 and a postdoctoral License in Mediaeval Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, Canada, in 2009. He has worked as a researcher in Germany, where he has held such awards as the Alexander Von Humboldt Fellowship, the DAAD Fellowship and, most recently, the Heinrich Hertz Fellowship. He has authored four monographs: Amalasuintha (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Theodahad (University of Toronto Press, 2014), now appearing in Italian translation; a book on the political thought of Ostrogothic Italy (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006); and a book on late antique Rome (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005). He is also the author of more than 25 articles, as well as translations and commentaries of ancient texts. At UMKC, he has been awarded the Trustees’ Faculty Scholar Award (2015), the UMRB and the Norman Royall Professorship. In 2015, he was awarded early tenure.

Undergraduate Courses

• HISTORY 201 - European History to 1600
• HISTORY 206 - World History to 1450 
• HISTORY 301WI - Historiography and Method 
• HISTORY 411A - Medieval Civilization I 
• HISTORY 471 - Ancient Greece
• HISTORY 472 - Ancient Rome 
• HISTORY 474 - Late Antiquity: The Transformation of the Mediterranean World (200-600 AD)

Graduate Courses

• HISTORY 5511 - Medieval Civilization I 
• HISTORY 5571R - Ancient Greece
• HISTORY 5572R - Ancient Rome 
• HISTORY 5574 - Late Antiquity: The Transformation of the Mediterranean World (200-600 AD)
• HISTORY 5586GR - Colloquium in World History 
• HISTORY 5587R - Research Seminar