Gordon Sayre
Professor of English
University of Oregon
English Department, 118 PLC, Eugene, OR 97403
phone 541 346-1313 * fax 541 346-1509
Email: gsayre@uoregon.edu
A link to my pages on the colonial Louisiana writers Dumont de Montigny and Le Page du Pratz
I am a specialist in colonial and early American literature. I'm particularly interested in eco-criticism, Native American studies, exploration narratives, captivity narratives, autobiography, natural history writing, and in issues of the prehistory and paleo-anthropology of the Americas.
My webpage at the University of Oregon English department has my CV and related information on my courses.
My students looking for updated course information should login at the UO Blackboard site. Less current course information is below.
| For Students
|
| English 104, Introduction to Literature - Fiction My sections of this lower-division course are designed around the theme of the double or doppelganger in literature. Readings include novels by Pahlaniuk, Dostoevsky, and Saramago. |
| English 461, American Literature to 1800 |
| English 391 American Novels of the 1900s syllabus |
| English 410 - Literature, Natural History, and America A course on natural history writing, featuring the writings of William Bartram, Alexander Von Humboldt, François-René Chateaubriand, John James Audubon, and Charles Darwin. |
| English 410 - Early American Personal Narratives This syllabus is posted on the syllabus exchange page of the Society for Early Americanists website. The link will take you there. |
| Comparative Literature 413/513 - Conquest and Cultural Representation in the New World A comparative look at important colonial texts from Brazil, New France, and New Spain. |
For colleagues: Publications
Books:
Regards sur le monde atlantique, 1715-1747 by Jean-François Benjamin Dumont de Montigny. Edited by Carla Zecher, Gordon Sayre, and Shannon Dawdy. Québec: Septentrion, 2008.
The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero: Native Resistance and the Literatures of America, from Moctezuma to Tecumseh. University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
American Captivity Narratives: Selected Narratives with Introduction. New Riverside Editions, Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Paul Lauter, series editor.
"Les Sauvages Américains": Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature . University of North Carolina Press, 1997.Articles (you'll find pdfs of some of these publications in the links):
“Natchez Ethnohistory Revisited: New Manuscript Sources from Le Page du Pratz and Dumont de Montigny” Louisiana History (Forthcoming)
[with Carla Zecher and Shannon Dawdy] “A French Soldier in Louisiana: The Memoir of Dumont de Montigny” The French Review 80:6 (May 2007), 1265-1277.
"Prehistoric Diasporas: Colonial Theories of the Origins of Native American Peoples." Writing Race Across the Atlantic World, Medieval to Modern. Ed. Gary Taylor and Philip Beidler. London: Palgrave, 2005: 51-75.
"Melodramas of Rebellion: Metamora and the Literary Historiography of King Philip's War in the 1820s." Arizona Quarterly 60:2 (Summer 2004), 1-32.
"'Azakia,' Ouâbi, and Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton: A Romance of the Early American Republic." Princeton University Library Chronicle 64:2 (Winter 2003), 313-332.
"Plotting the Natchez Massacre: Le Page du Pratz, Dumont de Montigny, Chateaubriand." Early American Literature 37:3 (Fall 2002): 381-413. Awarded Richard Beale Davis Prize, 2003.
"If Thomas Jefferson had visited Niagara Falls: The Sublime Wilderness Spectacle in America, 1775-1825." ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 8:2 (Summer 2001): 141-162. Reprinted in The ISLE Reader: Ecocriticism 1993-2003, Ed. Michael P. Branch and Scott Slovic. University of Georgia Press, 2003, 102-123.
“The Mammoth: Endangered Species or Vanishing Race?” JEMCS: Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies 1:1 (Spring/Summer 2001), 63-87.
"Communion in Captivity: Torture, Martyrdom and Gender in New France and New England." Finding Colonial Americas: Essays Honoring J. A. Leo Lemay. Ed. Carla Mulford and David S. Shields. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001: 50-63.
"Abridging Between Two Worlds: John Tanner as American Indian Autobiographer." American Literary History 11:3 (Fall 1999), 480-499.
"The Mound Builders and the Imagination of American Antiquity in Jefferson, Bartram, and Chateaubriand." Early American Literature 33:3 (Fall 1998), 225-249.
"Defying Assimilation, Confounding Authenticity: The Case of William Apess." a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 11:1 (Spring 1996), 1-18.
"The Beaver as Native and as Colonist." Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue canadienne de littérature comparée 22:3-4 (Fall/Winter 1995-96, Special Issue "Postcolonial Literatures: Theory and Practice"), 659-682. Reprinted in The Post Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2006: 507-510.
modified January 8, 2009