Education

M.A. University of Virginia (2024)
M.A. Boston University (2016)
B.A. University of Central Arkansas (2014)

Biography

Bethany Bell is a PhD Candidate in the history department at the University of Virginia. Her dissertation research focuses on slavery, materiality, and the built environment in the U.S. South during the mid to late 19th century. Bell has  worked as a researcher on behalf of the Memory Project at UVA, uncovering the history of the Charlottesville slave trade as well as a number of other public history projects in Central Virginia. 

Bell holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Central Arkansas and Boston University respectively.

Research

Master's Thesis:  "Dismantling The Master's House: How Freedom Seekers Reshaped the Built Environment During the U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865" explores how unfree and free Black southerners used the Civil War as a catalyst to unmake the landscape of slavery and form a landscape of liberation. 

Media Coverage

Sarah Kuta, Ancestry Releases Records of 183,000 Enslaved Individuals in America, Smithsonian Magazine, June 11, 2024

Paul Michael Williams, 'Our history in our own hands.' Tracing ancestry through tragedy and triumph, Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 15, 2024

Erin O'Hare, "New research uncovers more than 300 names of people enslaved in Albemarle County between 1830 and 1865", Charlottesville Tomorrow, October 31, 2024

Andrew Ramspacher, “‘Remarkable’ UVA Students Expand Possibilities Through Washington Post Partnership,” UVA Today, March 13, 2023

Internet and Popular Press Publications

Fragments of Freedom in the Fine Print | Ancestry.com, June 11, 2024

Rhiannon Giddens's Build A House: Homeplace Making in Black Memory and Imagination, Perspectives | American Historical Association, August 24, 2023

Beyoncé's Formation: Homeplace Making in Black Memory and Imagination, Perspectives | American Historical Association, July 26, 2023

"Florida’s rejection of an AP course is the latest salvo in a very old war", The Washington Post, January 25, 2023.

"In Their Own Words: Black Pioneers from UVA's North Grounds to the Pacific Northwest", Race and Slavery at UVA's North Grounds, December 8, 2022

Awards and Honors

• Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society | 2025
• Memphis State Eight Paper Prize, Third Place, University of Memphis Graduate Association of African American History | 2024
• UVA Arts Humanities and Social Sciences Summer Research Grant | 2024
• Summer Research and Conference Travel Funding | Department of History, University of Virginia | 2024
• Dana White Fellowship, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University | 2024
• UVA Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Council Research Grant | Fall 2024 

Courses Taught

Graduate Teaching Assistant

AAS 1010: Introduction to African and African American Studies (Fall 2025)

LASE 2510: Music, Social Identity, and the University (Summer 2024)