Peter Hutchins Wood

Peter H. Wood was born in St. Louis in 1943. After studying early American history at Harvard and Oxford, he taught at Duke from 1975 until 2007. His pioneering 1974 book on enslavement in the colonial era appeared last year in an expanded fiftieth-anniversary edition: Black Majority: Race, Rice, and Rebellion in South Carolina, 1670-1740. Dr. Wood, a longtime member of the AAS, has written articles on topics ranging from ancient dugout canoes to why Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon. He is an author for the major American History textbook, Created Equal, and Oxford Press will soon publish a new edition of his 2003 survey, entitled Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America.

His Huggins Lectures at Harvard University resulted in Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War (2010). That year, he received the Asher Distinguished Teaching Award given by the American Historical Association. He and his wife, historian Elizabeth Fenn, now live in Longmont, Colorado, where he continues to write and grow gourds.

Longmont, CO
United States

Elected to AAS
October 1979