Andrew Sluyter received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and currently teaches at LSU. His major interests involve the environmental history and historical ecology of the colonization of the Americas, and he has made various contributions to the theorization of colonialism and landscape, the critique of neo-environmental determinism, the understanding of pre-colonial and colonial agriculture and environmental change in Mexico, and to revealing African contributions to the establishment of cattle ranching in Louisiana, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Previous publications include dozens of journal articles as well as the books Colonialism and Landscape, published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2003, and Black Ranching Frontiers, published by Yale University Press in 2012. A new book on the Hispanics and Latinos of New Orleans will come out in September 2015 with LSU Press.