Moors Dressed as Moors

In Moors Dressed as Moors, Javier Irigoyen-Garcia draws on a wide range of sources to reveal the currency of Moorish clothing in early modern Iberian society.

Javier Irigoyen-García is an associate professor of Spanish Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His previous work, The Spanish Arcadia, is also published by the University of Toronto Press.

"Moors Dressed as Moors will be of great value to scholars and students seeking to understand the complexity that underpins the history of the Morisco minority in Spain. Moreover, given the current controversies relating to the status and cultural assimilation of Muslim minorities in Europe (controversies that continue to involve debates about clothing), this is research that is still very relevant."

Filomena Barros, University of Évora:

"This book is well supported by a solid theoretical apparatus, primary sources, and a vast bibliography…this well-written book undoubtedly constitutes an essential work on clothing and identity."

Christina H. Lee, Princeton University:

"Irigoyen’Garcia’s book is a much-needed corrective to existing studies on early modern Spanish dress, which tend to undermine the diversity of Morisco cultures and their sartorial practices, which, in many cases, were not that distinguishable from others in their local context. This is a must read for any scholar interested in better appreciating the complex relationship between dress, social status, and ethnicity in early modern Iberian. I will certainly assign it in future graduate courses on early modern cultures, as it contributes not only to discussions on clothing, but also to the construction of Iberian identities more broadly speaking."

Laura Pérez Hernández:

"This is an interesting and useful book for readers who are interested in the understanding of clothes beyond aesthetics."

Israel Burshatin, Haverford College:

"Irigoyen-Garcia’s study amplifies with scholarly rigor our understanding of early modern Iberian cultural politics in ways that resonate with our own cultural locations as scholars at a time of heightened ethnic and national tensions."

Luis F. Avilés, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Irvine:

"The overall scope of research undertaken by Javier Irigoyen-García is ambitious and the results impressive. Moors Dressed as Moors is an important and fundamental contribution to the field. Irigoyen-García’s work corrects several consolidated readings in Iberian scholarship and adds a new and important perspective to the reading of several literary texts. This book is an excellent example of the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach that manages a diversity of disciplinary methods such as philology, history, literary and cultural studies."

Cory Reed, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Texas, Austin:

"Moors Dressed as Moors is a fascinating study that will resonate with students and scholars of Hispanic and Iberian studies. The author’s exhaustive and detailed analysis of archival material, previously unknown to scholars, illuminates the economic and social dimensions of sartorial production and commerce in Moorish clothing as a desirable cultural artifact."