A lecture concerning early Dutch mission work with Native Americans will be presented at Hope College by Dr. Paul Otto of the Dordt College faculty on Friday, Oct. 8, at 3:45 p.m. in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
Otto will present "Wilden en Calvinisten (Savages
and Calvinists): Dutch Missions to Native Americans in
Colonial New York." He will explore Dutch attitudes toward
Native Americans in early American history, including how
much the idea that Native Americans were incapable of
becoming "civilized" affected efforts to evangelize them.
Otto is an assistant professor of history at Dordt
College, which is located in Sioux Center, Iowa. He is the
author of "New Netherland Frontier: Europeans and Native
Americans along the Lower Hudson River, 1524-1664," and
maintains an on-going research interest on Dutch-Native
American relations while also studying the representation of
Native Americans in film.
He originally wrote "New Netherland Frontier" as
his dissertation, receiving his doctorate in 1995 from
Indiana University in Bloomington. In 1998, a revised
version received the Hendricks Prize for the best manuscript
on the Dutch experience in colonial America. He is
currently revising the manuscript for publication.
Otto has written a variety of articles, reviews
and essays, and has presented papers or chaired sessions at
the meetings of organizations including the Popular Culture
Association, the Association for Netherlandic Studies and
the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and
Culture. At the invitation of the New Netherland Project,
he presented the paper "Common Practices and Mutual
Misunderstandings: Henry Hudson, Native Americans, and the
Birth of New Netherland" at the 22nd annual Rensselaerswijck
Seminar in Albany, N.Y., on Saturday, Sept. 18.
Otto's lecture at Hope is part of the college's
"History Colloquium Series," which the department of history
presents each year in conjunction with Phi Alpha Theta, the
history honorary society. Otto's lecture is co-sponsored
with the A.C. Van Raalte Institute at Hope.
Lubbers Hall is located along 10th Street between
College and Columbia avenues.