Filson + MESDA: New Voices in Kentucky Material Culture

October 13-14, 2023 Louisville, KY

The Filson Historical Society (Louisville, Kentucky) and the Museum of Southern Decorative Arts are partnering to open new conversations about material culture in the colonial and early-national Ohio Valley. Whose perspectives on the past have been ignored? Which stories have gone untold? Whose work has been un-examined and underappreciated? Who can tell us a new, relevant story now?

This two-day conference will feature panels exploring Black, Indigenous, female, and queer perspectives on the confluence of rivers and cultures in the 18th and 19th century. It is intended to spark new ideas by bringing together academics, curators, collectors, and practicing artists.

Registration information will be posted soon, with reduced rates for MESDA and Filson members. To learn more, click here to visit the Filson’s site.

 

Conference Schedule

Friday October 13, 2023

4:00 – 5:30 

Mairin Odle, University of Alabama, “Under the Skin: Tattoos, Scalps, and the Contested Language of Bodies in Early America”

Casey Price, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, “Mapping Cherokee Foreign Policy: John Stuart’s’ Map of the area between Fort Loudon, Tennessee, and Kaskaskia, Illinois”

6:00 – 7:00 Keynote:

Kariann Akemi Yokoda, University of Colorado-Denver, “Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America became a Postcolonial Nation”

Saturday October 14, 2023

8:30 – 9:00 Coffee and Pastries Available in Lobby

9:00 – 10:30

Jason Herbert, Historians at the Movies

Mark Alan Mattes, University of Louisville, “Trees and Texts: Indigenous History, Material Media, and the Logan Elm”

11:00 – 12:30 

Neal Gene Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, “‘Half horse – half alligator and tipped with the snapping turtle:’ Clothing the early Kentuckian”

Robert P. Murray, Mercy University, “Hemp: Everywhere & Nowhere”

12:30 – 2:00 Lunch

Boxed lunches, included in ticket price for registrants

2:00 – 4:00

Ben Bascom, Ball State University, “How (Not) to Leave a Legacy in the Early Republic: John Fitch, ‘Lord’ Timothy Dexter, and the Lessons of John Filson”

Philippe Halbert, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Leading the Way: The 1749 Lead Plate Expedition and French Dreams of Empire in the Ohio Valley

Lea Lane, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts