Friday Seminar with Peter Marx

This week, guest lecturer Peter Marx (University of Cologne) is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his project "'Unehrlich' [Insincere] and marginalized: On the precarious status of performers in the Early Modern period."

The legal status of performers – actors, dancers, musicians, media performers – was highly precarious throughout the Early Modern period. Looking more closely into the field, it becomes obvious that this status reflects more general questions of freedom, social status and a field of arts that was an intrinsic part of the social fabric, yet always confined to the margins. The paper tries to sketch some outlines for future research in this field in the perspective of a connected history (Subrahmanyam).