David Dettmer, M.A.
Associate Professor
Department of Composition & Literary Studies
Austin Community College · Austin, Texas
Associate Professor
Department of Composition & Literary Studies
Austin Community College · Austin, Texas
My name is David Dettmer, and I am an associate professor on the faculty of the Department of Composition & Literary Studies (formerly known as the Department of English) at Austin Community College (ACC) in Austin, Texas. I teach composition courses and literature-survey courses within the credit discipline ENGLISH listed in the ACC Course Schedule.
I began teaching at ACC in 1995, as a member of the adjunct faculty, and have been a member of the full-time faculty since 2016. I have worked in professional jobs outside of academic teaching as well, at The University of Texas at Austin and in corporate America.
All of my formal education I have received in public schools. I earned my M.A. in English at The University of Texas at Austin in 1989, and my B.A. in English and my B.S.B. in Business Administration from the University of Kansas in 1987. I also hold a Texas Teacher Certificate (lifetime, grades 6-12, in English and six other subjects).
To view my full curriculum vitae, click on or tap the menu item CV in the menu bar at the top of this website (or on smaller screens click on or touch the Collapsed Menu Icon — the three horizontal lines — to reveal the menu of this website's pages).
Current ACC students enrolled in my classes can visit the Handouts page on this website to find electronic versions of all of the handouts for our class. These materials are accessible only for students enrolled in my classes during the current semester or session. In the menu bar at the top of this website, click on or tap the menu item Handouts (or on smaller screens click on or tap the Collapsed Menu Icon — the three horizontal lines — to reveal the menu of this website's pages.)
Yes . . . he does! (Well, he will — the first is coming later this year. But please don't call them a blog.)
Yes . . . some have! In 2012 University of Texas Press published a book of essays about The University of Texas — The Texas Book Two: More Profiles, History, and Reminiscences of the University — that I edited and to which I contributed two essays. It was the follow-up volume to The Texas Book: Profiles, History, and Reminiscences of the University (edited by Richard A. Holland, University of Texas Press, 2006), to which I contributed an essay and helped significantly with its editing and production. I have also published pieces in the Austin American-Statesman, and I wrote some public-facing texts during my years on the staff of the president of The University of Texas at Austin.
See the Published Work page on this website to learn more about my published written work and public presentations I have given associated with that written work, as well as my CV.
In his now well-anthologized letter of December 10, 1513 to his friend Francesco Vettori, Niccolò Macchiavelli relates his happiness engaging in conversation with others ("the ancients") through his study of the books in his private library. (Machiavelli was a Florentine statesman and political philosopher who had recently been arrested, tortured, and then exiled in the months after a regime change in Florence in which the Medici faction had removed the head of the republican government of Florence, Pietro Sodorini, with whom Machiavelli was closely associated. Vettori was at that time the Florentine ambassador to the Supreme Pontiff [that is, the Pope] in Rome.)
On November 23, 1513 Vettori had written a friendly letter to Machiavelli in which he describes a typical day for him in Rome — a brief meeting with the Supreme Pontiff (the Pope), numerous meetings with the highest ranking cardinals and other ecclesiastical leaders, and movements in and about the palaces and gardens and splendor of sixteenth-century Vatican City. The exiled Machiavelli responded mimetically to his friend, with humor, describing a typical day for him, which would include puttering around his small property, a farm, in Sant'Andra in Percussina just outside of Florence and interacting closely with the rustics who labored on it before walking down to the inn in the local village, where he would absorb himself in the vulgar ways of his surroundings, engaging in gossip and news about the villages and jousting in good-natured arguments about common games played with the locals. But as the days would come to an end, he would return to his farm and retire to his library to absorb himself in a much different way. He writes,
When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely.
Libraries are alive with ideas and conversation. They are a place of intense activity — a shared activity, even though those with whom one shares it may be long deceased. They have great value for those who understand how to use them and how to appreciate the potential they hold. They are timeless because they span all time.
Frequently there are ideas expressed in the texts one encounters that are worth remembering for further thought and reflection — for their depth, for their complexity, for their disruptiveness, or for the beauty of their expression. Developed long before the advent of electronic texts and direct searches, a "commonplace book" is a time-honored practice of copying out by hand interesting or favored quotations from the books in one's library into a notebook of some sort, and then noting the author and source of the quotation. Oftentimes keepers of a commonplace book annotate their entries, to record their thoughts on the disquisitions of the authors whose works they have read, thereby engaging in a conversation with them. Here on my website I maintain a commonplace book of my own. It is in its beginning stages, and growing as I add to it.
To peruse my commonplace book, see the Commonplace Book page on this website.
Mailing address:
Mr. David Dettmer, Associate Professor
Department of Composition & Literary Studies
Austin Community College
Highland Campus, Building 1000, Room 1429.04
6101 Highland Campus Drive
Austin, Texas 78752-6000
Email: ddettmer@austincc.edu
My faculty office:
Highland Campus, Building 1000, Room 1429.04
Office hours: (Fall 2025 – 16-week session)
M T W Th 3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.
» or by appointment
Office telephone/voicemail:
(512) 223-7722
My campus mailbox:
Give your item to the staff person at the public Information Desk outside the Highland Campus Administration Office, HLC Building 2000, Room 2.2400. The staff person will date-stamp your item and place it in my mailbox in the restricted-access mail room.
My ACC faculty website: