Associate Professor J. Fausz currently teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. His current research interests include American indigenous peoples, Colonial America, the fur trade, the Lewis and Clark expedition and era, and the presence of French Creole culture in the Mississippi Valley. He was the assistant editor for the book, The Complete Works of Captain John Smith. He also has a variety of other publications in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography and others. He also has contributed to many books such as Cultures in Contact: The Impact of European Contacts on Native American Cultural Institutions, AD 1000-1800 and Le Castor Fait Tout: Selected Papers of the 5th North American Fur Trade Conference.