He obtained his PhD in Hispanic Literatures at the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked with Uruguayan poet Enrique Fierro. He is the author of La Historia de los Prejuicios en América. La Conquista (2007). He just finished a new book, Describing Anahuac: the American Beginnings of Modernity (1492–1590), along with its Spanish version, Los Diálogos de Cristo y la Serpiente Quetzal: México y los Inicios de la Modernidad (1492–1590) (both forthcoming) which is about the Spanish description of American nature at the time of their conquest of La Española and Mexico.