Paul Otto (historian)
Paul Otto is a professor of American history at George Fox University, and a researcher in the area of Dutch-Native American relations and wampum. Education and career. Otto received his BA (1987) from Dordt University, his MA (1990) from Western Washington University, and his PhD (1995) in early American and Native American history at Indiana University. Otto has taught at Calvin University and Dordt University and currently teaches at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, where he has been since 2002. He has served as the chair of their History, Sociology, & Politics Department, 2005-2019. He  teaches courses on American history, Latin America, and Southern Africa, with a particular interest in issues of race and ethnicity. In 2010, Otto received a faculty achievement award for research as an undergraduate professor at George Fox University. Scholarship. Otto's scholarship has focused on the relations between the Dutch and Native Americans in colonial New York. Otto was recognized as a Fulbright scholar in the Netherlands in 1993-1994. His scholarship and first book, "The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley", published by Berghahn Press, led him to receive the Hendricks Award  in 1998. Further, Otto has been recognized as a fellow of the New Netherland Institute and the Holland Society of New York. His work has also been cited in history textbooks covering the period, such as Eric Nellis's "Empire of Regions," and Alan Gallay's "Colonial & Revolutionary America," and in journal articles such as one by Nancy Hagedorn, who cited Otto's work as exemplifying a trend in American historical scholarship towards a "more intricate and subtle, but also more representative, vision of early America". Otto is currently researching wampum in the colonial northeast, and has delivered lectures on  the subject at forums such as SUNY New Paltz's Henry Hudson Symposium. He has received an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the Henry E. Huntington Library (San Marino, California), an Earhart Research Grant, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend. In 2015-2016, he was a fellow at the National Humanities Center. He has also served as co-editor of the Journal of Early American History.