Anderson, Gary Clayton 1948-

views updated

Anderson, Gary Clayton 1948-

PERSONAL:

Born April 2, 1948, in Breckenridge, MN; son of Gerald S. (in business) and Rachel Marie (a social worker) Anderson; married Laura Larsen (a housewife), September 4, 1971; children: Kari Mari, Evan Christofer, Jon Karl. Education: Concordia College, B.A. and B.S., 1971; University of South Dakota, M.A., 1972; University of Toledo, Ph.D., 1978. Politics: Liberal.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Oklahoma, Department of History, West Lindsey, Rm. 403A, Norman, OK 73019. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Historian, educator, and writer. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, assistant professor, 1978-79; Oregon University, Corvallis, assistant professor, 1979-80; Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, research fellow, 1980-81; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, assistant professor of history, 1981-91; University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, Department of History faculty member, 1991—.

MEMBER:

Organization of American Historians, Society for Ethnohistory, Western History Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Summer research grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1980.

WRITINGS:

Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1984.

Little Crow, Spokesman for the Mdewakanton Sioux, Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, MN), 1986.

(Editor, with Alan R. Woolworth) Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862, Minnesota Historical Society Press (St. Paul, MN), 1988.

Sitting Bull and the Paradox of Lakota Nationhood, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996, 3rd edition, Pearson/Longman (New York, NY), 2007.

The Indian Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1999.

The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Essays in Honor of W. Eugene Hollon, edited by Ronald Lora, University of Toledo (Toledo, OH), 1980; (author of introduction) Dakotas or Sioux in Minnesota as They Were in 1834, Minnesota Historical Society Press (St. Paul, MN), 1986; and (author of foreword) Three Years among the Comanches: The Narrative of Nelson Lee, the Texas Ranger, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1991. Contributor to history journals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gary Clayton Anderson told CA: "My major research interest is in ethnohistory, a field that places a strong emphasis upon cross-cultural study. While I initially focused attention on ethnic relations along the early Minnesota frontier, I am now expanding this research to the Great Plains and the Mississippi Valley. I am most interested in how ethnic groups interact socially and economically. The journals of Pierre Charles Le Sueur provides a wonderful source of information for studying ethnic relations in the Mississippi Valley. My biography of Little Crow, one of the principal leaders of the 1862 Sioux Rebellion in Minnesota, illustrates how ethnic relations can—and often did—end in violence."