Virtual Material Matters: It’s in the Details
The Sixteenth Annual “Material Matters: It’s in the Details” conference takes place virtually on January 23, 2027. We invite you to join us online for this conference on material culture spanning 1609-1815.
This conference is only available online, streaming through Zoom Webinars. A laptop, tablet, or smartphone is required to participate in the conference. Advanced registration is required. Registration and session information will be available in early Fall 2026.
Participants will receive a Zoom link three days before the conference by email (a reminder link will be sent the morning of the conference as well). Participants are invited to ask questions of each presenter using the “Q&A” button in Zoom.
Saturday, January 23, 2027
9:45am Welcome
10:00-10:30am Tempered Steel and National Temperament: The Bayonet and Eighteenth-Century Conceptions of French National Character—After its enigmatic emergence during the early seventeenth century, the bayonet soon became a ubiquitous feature of Europe’s battlefields. Over the following two centuries, this commonplace weapon also developed into an evocative material symbol of French martial identity and national character. This talk examines how military theorists, Enlightenment thinkers, and Revolutionary politics transformed the bayonet into l’arme nationale, intertwining infantry tactics with concepts of national character. Alex Belovsky, PhD, is a recent graduate of Vanderbilt University whose work focuses on the effects of military discourse on national identity in Modern Europe.
10:45-11:15am In Matters of Military Headgear, Materials Matter (France, mid-18th century–1815)—This presentation examines the transformation of military headgear in the French Army from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the First Empire, focusing on the materials and manufacturing processes that enabled innovation. Drawing on previously unpublished archival and material sources, it argues that the search for headgear better suited to military service was driven by the French state’s changing expectations of its army, as well as by the rationalization of relationships among manufacturers, military administrators, and soldiers and the development of supply networks capable of sustaining innovation. Alexandre Longer is a doctoral fellow at Sorbonne University and a professeur agrégé in History. He received the 2022 Military History Prize from the French Ministry of the Armed Forces for his master’s thesis on infantry headgear and is currently affiliated with the Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle (UR 3550).
11:30am-12:00pm Insignia in Motion: The Resilience of Irish Regimental Materials Across Boarders, 1609-1815—Exploring how Irishness was materially expressed and sustained within British Military structures between the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, this paper examines the objects made, used, and altered by two major Irish-recruited units: the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot and the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot. It highlights how Irish identity was negotiated through items such as buttons and cap badges, as soldiers interacted with, or altered the material world of military service, particularly where Irishness persisted and was transformed as regiments and their personnel moved across transnational spaces. Eira H. Betthell is an interdisciplinary Doctoral researcher at the University of Essex, with a broader practitioner background in military organizational dynamics.
12:00-12:30pm Lunch Break
12:30-1:15pm What the What? 18th-Century finds in Rural Nova Scotia Museum Collections—In the grand scheme of things, Nova Scotia can often be overlooked. Being mostly made up of quiet, rural communities, the museums in the province reflect that quiet quality. Our long history though, speaks to being a leader in the global Atlantic. There are artifacts in those quiet museum collections that speak of that powerful history. With significant waves of immigration of cultures in the eighteenth century, some items stand out for their historical record and quality of construction. This paper will examine some of those sometimes overlooked items in both the Nova Scotia Museum and Association of Nova Scotia Museums collections. Kelly-Arlene Grant is a life-long creator of material culture items for living history programs following the methodology of experimental archaeology. She holds a PhD with a significant research/creation project from Concordia University in Montreal and currently holds the Vice-chair of the Bridgetown Historical Society and Director of Collections at the James House in Bridgetown.
1:30-2:00pm Thomas Dring’s “Common Pin”: Vernacular Material Culture, Smallpox, and the American Revolution—While being held captive on British prison-ship The Jersey in 1782, Captain Thomas Dring improvised inoculation on himself using a “common pin” and the body matter from a fellow prison suffering from smallpox. Dring’s success with the procedure speaks both to the vernacular nature of medical care during the American Revolution, as well as the understudied history of the material culture of smallpox inoculation throughout the 18th century. This talk offers a rereading of Dring’s experience with his common pin to better express the socially-informed meaning bestowed on (non)medical objects. Becca Lo Presti is a PhD student in the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
2:15-2:45pm Eepiihkanita and His Tomahawk: Identity, Lethality, and Commemoration on the Revolutionary Frontier—William Wells, or Eepiihkanita to his adopted Myaamia people, had become a prominent figure in frontier myth by the nineteenth century, as one of the few people to have fought on both sides of the Ohio Indians wars—first as a Myaamia warrior in St. Clair’s Defeat, and later, as the chief of scouts for Anthony Wayne’s Fallen Timbers campaign. This paper will explore a firsthand sketch and history of his personal tomahawk, a significant material relic of the Revolutionary Era borderlands and how it was remembered well after the fighting ceased. John William Nelson is Associate Professor of early American history at Texas Tech University, and is the author of the award-winning book Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent.
