About me…
Anthony W. Wood, PhD
Home.
I grew up in the smelter town of Anaconda, Montana where history imbued the very soils and seldom promised a safe or nostalgic version of the past. And yet, I have never stopped returning to it as my point of origin as I continue my professional and personal walk through Western history. Though I have no immediate plans to write about my hometown, I sense that the enigma that is Anaconda will pull me back someday. Regardless, it’s already had a lifelong effect on me. When I was about ten years old, my parents moved out of town and into the forested foothills of the Pintler Range that stretch between Anaconda and Georgetown Lake. I wandered the woods for my entire childhood, and I have wandered mountains wherever I found them since.
Education.
After I graduated high school in Anaconda, I started my study of History at Carroll College, in Helena, Montana. Finishing my BA in 2015, I began work as a researcher at the Montana Historical Society and the Montana State Preservation Office with a stint as a culture resource intern for the National Parks Service thrown in there for good measure. In 2016, my Masters program at Montana State University allowed me time and resources to begin thinking and writing in more depth about issues that had always engaged me. My thesis drew on the research I began at the Montana Historical Society and was finished in 2018 as “The Erosion of the Racial Frontier: Settler Colonialism and the History of Black Montana.” That project was far from complete but prepared me in important ways for my doctorate at the University of Michigan.
Mountain Withdrawal and Other Illnesses.
Only a couple weeks before my wife, Steffany, and I made the move from Montana to Michigan in the summer of 2018, it was discovered that nagging cough which had dogged me since the spring was actually a chest full of tumors, pushing on my lungs. I was diagnosed with Hogkins Lymphoma, a blood cancer of the lymphatic system. Knowing that one of the world’s best cancer treatment centers awaited us made the eastward move hopeful even as the Rockies faded behind us. I was endlessly fortunate to manage the chemo well and continued with PhD courses as planned. Since the spring of 2019, following a stem-cell transplant, I have been cancer-free. I received my Doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2024 and now live in Helena with Steffany, our toddler Elliott, and an impossibly rotund schnauzer, Whit.
Painting.
After college, I directed my lifelong love of art and the West toward a new endeavor. Painting the landscapes and scenes of Montana and the West have filled more hours than I care to count and have decluttered my mind in necessary ways. I hope to have many decades to improve. If you are interested in my art, go check out the “Fine Art” tab on this website! I am represented by Mountain Sage Gallery at 433 Last Chance Gulch in Downtown Helena. Stop by and see my paintings if you are in town!
Happy Trails!
