Topic: Indians in Renaissance Europe

Bio: Dr. Christian Feest, an Austrian ethnologist and ethnohistorian that specializes in the Native Americans of Eastern North America and the Northeastern United States and their material culture, ethnological image research, and Native American anthropology of art. Feest is acclaimed for his pioneering research and publications on the early European-Native American colonial contact period.

Feest studied ethnology and linguistics at the University of Vienna, where his Ph.D. dissertation was titled, Virginia Algonkian, 1570-1703: Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography.

His many benchmarks include: Curator (later Director) of the North and Central American collections at the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna, and director of the photo archive; teaching anthropology at the University of Vienna; holding the professorship of the ethnology of indigenous America at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfort am Main; and serving as a post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and later at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Since 1973, his Research Activities have focused on field studies in the USA—especially Pamunkey (Virginia), Chitimacha (Louisiana), Ottawa (Michigan), Lakota (South Dakota)—involving numerous trips in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.