Education

M.A. History, University of Virginia (2023)

• M.A. Thesis, "'Scarcity of Skillful Hands': Carpentry at Monticello, 1769-1830"

M.A. American Material Culture, University of Delaware (2020)

• M.A. Thesis, "Who Built the City on the Severn? Slavery, Material Culture, and Landscapes of Labor in Early Annapolis"

B.S., History, Towson University (2018)

Biography

Bethany McGlyn is a fourth-year PhD candidate and Jefferson Scholars Foundation Fellow specializing in eighteenth and nineteenth-century craft and material culture in America and the Atlantic World. Her dissertation, "'Work and Be Happy': Craft, Slavery, and Social Reform in Philadelphia, 1780-1840," explores how craft labor emerged as central to debates over gradual abolition laws, colonization schemes, and the founding and management of reform insitutions like prisons and orphanages in early national Philadelphia. At UVa, Bethany also works with the University's fine and decorative arts collection as the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Public History Fellow, and is a historical researcher with the Gibbons Project under the President's Commission on Slavery and the University. In Spring and Summer 2025, she will be a dissertation fellow in residence at the Winterthur Museum and Library and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Bethany is a curator and public historian with experience working at museums and historic sites including Historic Rock Ford, Winterthur, Historic Annapolis, and the National Parks Service, and was the inaugural Curatorial Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello in summer 2023. Her work has been supported by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Alexandria Association, Furniture History Society, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, Jefferson Scholars Foundation, Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, The Decorative Arts Trust, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Vernacular Architecture Forum, Homewood Museum at Johns Hopkins University, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts.  

Publications

Review of Hayden R. Smith, Carolina’s Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1860 in H-Net Environment, July 2021.

Media Appearances

Decorative Arts Trust Object Share featuring Bethany McGlyn at Historic Rock Ford

The Shaker Complex at Winterthur Museum with Bethany McGlyn

Montmorenci Stair Hall at Winterthur Museum with Bethany McGlyn

September Trust Talk with Bethany McGlyn and Tiffany Momon: Who Built the City on the Severn? Slavery and Craft in Annapolis

Internet and Popular Press Publications

"Completing the Picture: New Research into Craft, Slavery, and Servitude in Early Lancaster" The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust 

"The Contributions of Enslaved Artisans in Annapolis and Charleston: New Research and Resources" with Dr. Tiffany Momon, The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust 

Courses Taught

Graduate Teaching Assistant

HIUS 2101: Technologies of American Life (Spring 2024)

HIUS 3853: From Redlined to Subprime: Race and Real Estate in the US (Fall 2023)

HIUS 3011: Colonial British America (Spring 2023)

HIST 2212: Maps in World History (Fall 2022)