Denmark Students Explore Texas Literature with ACC Faculty
Students Experience Texas Culture During Month–Long Stay in Austin
by Joe O’Connell
They’re in search of the mythical Texas where cowboys ride their steeds across wide open spaces. Instead, 17 students from Odense Tekniske Gymnasium in a Danish town best known as the home of writer Hans Christian Andersen are in Austin for a month taking classes at Austin Community College and exploring all that is Texan.
ACC faculty member Joe O’Connell is leading the charge in teaching these students, ranging in age from 17 to 22, about Texas literature, including Larry McMurtry and O’Connell’s own novel–in–stories Evacuation Plan. O’Connell is joined in the effort by Dean Lyman Grant with sessions on Texas poets and faculty member Doug Dawson with a focus on Katherine Anne Porter. O’Connell gave the students a peek into small–town Texas when he invited them into his home near Taylor and then steered them to hamburgers and polka music at the nearby SPJST Hall. The group finished the evening with a high school football game in the tiny town of Thrall.
The students, who are also taking classes in Texas history and computer games, have a blog about their activities at texas.otg.dk. This is the second year for the program at ACC; a third year is already in the planning stages. The Texas literature section is adapted from O’Connell’s ACC Honors courses in Texas writing, and his big hope is that the Texas instructors will soon find their way to classrooms in Denmark.
