About the Dissertation
My dissertation, “Mimicry, Costume, and the Other: Performing Alterity in Early Modern Northern Europe,” conducted at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, examines representations of ethnic and social others in festivities such as tournaments, mummeries, and triumphal entries. I argue that sixteenth-century ethno- and socio-masquerades, in which participants impersonated figures like “Turks,” “Moors,” and “peasants,” were intertwined with shifting concepts of identity, which increasingly sought to classify the inhabitants of the seemingly expanding globe. These festive mimicries engaged with contemporaneous proto-ethnographic visual media such as costume books and maps, and both the proto-ethnographic and the festive representations of human difference defined the “self” against what the subject was not. While both sought to assert distance between costume and wearer, identity in the sixteenth century was in flux, and the bounds between self and other were continually revealed to be constructed and even porous. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the festive mimicry of alterity.
The “Turk,” the “Moor,” and the “peasant” were among the most beloved characters in early modern festival culture, and I trace the images and artifacts of their impersonation across a diverse array of media, including prints, tournament and festival books, panel and wall paintings, arms and armor, and goldsmiths’ works. Part One of the dissertation considers the performative imitation of the “Turk” in mock combats and mummeries, as well as the representation of Ottomans in objects used during festivities such as drinking vessels and automata. Mock combats were especially ubiquitous, from pyrotechnic spectacles to costumed jousts such as Nationen, Four Continents, and Hussars’ tournaments, which pitted imaginary versions of Turkish Muslims against equally imaginary Hungarians (Hussars). Part Two addresses the figure of the “Moor,” an ambiguous early modern category of human difference denoting non-Christian religious beliefs or extra-European ethnicity.1 The first chapter examines the incorporation of the heraldic Moor into festive environments, where he appeared in stained glass, wall paintings, and goldsmiths’ works as well as in tournaments, in which he adorned tourneyer’s helmets and shields. The Tucher family, whose heraldry displays the head of a Black African “Moor” on a golden ground provides an excellent case study for the investigation of this phenomenon. The second chapter analyzes the depiction of the Moriskentanz, or “Moorish” dance, while the third analyzes depictions of “performative blackness,” to borrow Noémie Ndiaye’s term, in mock combats, including Nationen, Four Continents, and Hussar’s tournaments. Part Three focuses on the oft-satirized figure of the peasant, who was impersonated in imagined peasant dances and play-acted Bauernhochzeiten. I will also examine peasant jousts, farcical tournaments that mocked the pretensions of peasants who dared to emulate their social betters but also parodied elite tournament culture. I will conclude this chapter in the world of urban dinner parties, which were animated by images of the peasantry on dining room walls and banqueting accoutrements and parodied in the performance of short comedic plays called tafel spelen.
Developing the Topic
I devised my dissertation topic over the course of several years. My interest was first sparked during a class in which I researched the mimicry of Ottoman Turks in tournaments. The following year, I wrote a paper about Pieter Bruegel’s Peasant Wedding Dance and the figure of the peasant in the context of dinner parties hosted and attended by Antwerp’s urban elites. I argued that Bruegel employed fashion to satirize not only the peasants, but also the urbanites that mocked them. In the summer of 2022—the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that I could travel to Europe—I realized that what had initially appeared to be disparate interests were actually closely intertwined phenomena. It struck me while I was examining a tournament book in Vienna that featured depictions of a Hussar’s tournament. Amidst the “Turks” and the “Hungarians,” I happened upon an image of costumed jousters fashioned as rustics, with unkempt hair and tall, leather boots—my first encounter with a Bauernturnier, and one that set the course of my research for years to come!
Fig. 1 Kurtze doch gegrundete beschreibung des Durchleutigen Hochgebornnen Fürsten…, Nikolas Solis, 1568 (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Brussels, Sig. A-K6 L7)
Hands-On Collections Research
While there are objects relevant to my project in the United States, the majority of the works that I study are held in European collections, and especially museums and libraries across Germany. Performing art historical research in-person has been crucial, as tactile engagement enriches one’s experience of objects and better approximates the original circumstances of their reception. The accessibility enabled by the Tucher fellowship allowed me to gain a more detailed and nuanced understanding of these works, spurring new and meaningful connections that have been invaluable to the development of my dissertation. Nuremberg served as a European “home-base” of sorts, from which I could plan research trips to visit collections in other cities in Germany as well as Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I was especially grateful for the chance to explore Nuremberg’s own rich holdings in the Museum Tucherschloss, the Stadtbibliothek, the Fembohaus, and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum itself. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België (KBR) in Brussels is home to an excellent, hand-colored copy of a festival book produced for the 1568 Munich wedding of Renata von Lothringen and Wilhem V von Bayern (Fig. 1). Getting to see it in person allowed me to identify key details that bolstered my understanding of the portrayal of ethnic and social others throughout the famed celebration’s many events. My visit to Vienna was a particular highlight, because I was able to study Albrecht Altdorfer’s “People of Calicut” watercolor from the Triumphzug Maximilians I as well as a beautifully illustrated festival book commemorating tournament festivities held in Stuttgart on the occasion of the 1609 wedding between Johann Friedrich, Herzog von Württemberg, Barbara Sophie, Markgräfin von Brandenburg. The opportunity to see the latter was instrumental in propelling my research on the iconography of the Four Continents and its incorporation into German tournament culture at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century.
Fig. 2 Turnierbuch (Nürnbergische Turnierbuch. Das Gesellenstechen…), 16th century Nuremberg (Stadtbibliothek, Nor.K.78, S. 13)
As generative as my travels were, Nuremberg’s abundant early modern holdings were truly at the heart of my research. While in Nuremberg, I was able to see tournament books depicting Gesellenstechen at both the Stadtbibliothek and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Fig. 2). One of the most exciting discoveries that I made during my six-month tenure as the Tucher fellow occurred in the library at the GNM. While looking through the Stammbuch of Onophirius Berbinger, I came across a curious painted miniature illustration of a tournament in which tournament participants dressed as peasants—complete with wooden bucket helmets!—jousted alongside tourneyers in garb evocative of pusikan-wielding, mustachioed Hungarians, a fascinating juxtaposition that I am looking forward to delving into in my dissertation (Figure 3).
Fig. 3 Scene of a Peasant Joust with Hungarians (?), Stammbuch des Onophrius Berbinger, 1570–1584 (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs 461, fols. 122v–123r)
Accomplishments and Connections in Nuremberg
I was also incredibly grateful for the chance to be a part of Nuremberg’s vibrant research community. I was privileged to benefit from the mentorship and support of Dr. Markus Huber, Leiter der Sammlung Bauteile und historisches Bauwesen sowie Skulptur bis 1800 and Dr. Johannes Pommeranz, Leiter der Bibliothek and curator of the upcoming exhibition Fastnacht: Tanz und Spiele in Nürnberg. Shortly after my arrival in Nuremberg, I took part in a Tagung held in anticipation of the Fastnacht exhibition’s November 2025 opening, where I was invited to speak alongside scholars from all around the country interested in the study of early modern Fastnacht festivities. The paper I presented was centered around images in Schembartbücher in the Nuremberg Stadtbibliothek and at the library of the University of California, Los Angeles that depicted a Schembartlauf held in 1485 as a dance between a “Moor” and a “peasant” (Fig. 5). Writing and presenting this paper was key to developing my understanding of the way that class played into these performances as well as the way that different “types” of alterity relate to and play off of one another. I was also fortunate to have had the opportunity to write a contribution for the exhibition’s upcoming publication. My essay examines the socially and ethnically parodic valences of the Moriskentanz in the German-speaking world and especially in Nuremberg. Additionally, at the end of my fellowship, I presented the early findings of my chapter on the aforementioned Four Continents tournaments, which had been the focus of much of my travel during those six months, to a group of scholars from the GNM and the Tucher Kulturstiftung. The talk spurred a lively discussion that continues to guide me as I develop my exploration of the topic.
Fig. 4 Schembartbuch, Nuremberg, mid-late 16th century (Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Nor. K. 444, fol. 35v)
I initially pictured spending the duration of the fellowship studying the utilization of the “Moor” as a device for figuring the self via a comparison between the decorative ethos of the heraldic Moor and the costumed impersonation of Moors in which participants transformed their bodies into simulacra of Black Africans. While the festive invocation of the heraldic Moor in tournament books and festive spaces remains an integral part of my dissertation, the six-month period of my fellowship in Nuremberg was largely shaped by my work in relation to the exhibition as well as by discoveries that I made throughout that process. Being in Nuremberg allowed me a great deal of flexibility in this regard, offering a wealth of objects to explore from all areas of my dissertation. Accordingly, my tenure as the Tucher fellow was an extremely productive and exciting chapter in the progress of my research.
I am grateful to the Tucher Kulturstiftung and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum for hosting me and making this last six months such an edifying and meaningful experience. I highly encourage other PhD candidates from around the world to apply for the fellowship and know that those who are fortunate enough to be chosen will have a similarly inspiring experience.
- While the word “Moor” is, rightly, no longer used to describe to real people, my use of this term reflects the historical usage. “Moor” cannot easily be mapped onto any one specific group of people—now or in the past; it was regularly applied to everybody from Muslims in the Maghreb region to Black African and Afro-diasporic people and even to people (and objects) from the Americas. By using the term, I hope to excavate a historicized understanding of this uniquely early modern category of human difference. Further, my use of the term is meant to illustrate the constructed nature of this taxonomy. It points to the ways in which the “Moor” was an invented category and, especially in festive contexts, an imaginary character—and often caricature. [↩]
