He teaches courses on American history, Latin America, and Southern Africa, with a particular interest in issues of race and ethnicity.
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.
His work has also been cited in history textbooks covering the period, such as Eric Nellis's Empire of Regions,[3] and Alan Gallay's Colonial & Revolutionary America,[4] 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".
[5] Otto is currently researching wampum in the colonial northeast,[6] and has delivered lectures on the subject at forums such as State University of New York at 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.