Dick Buckstead grew up on a family farm in Viborg, SD. It was a Danish-speaking community and Danish was the language spoken in the Buckstead home. He attended grades 1-6 in a one-room school house with 12 other children.
His journey from Viborg to St. Olaf took him to the University of South Dakota, a stint in the Korean War and the University of Iowa for his Ph.D. He has taught courses in 19th- and 20th-century British and American literature, as well as Asian literature. Indeed, the farm boy from Viborg took the second group of students in the Term in the Far East to Thailand in 1967-68. The next year he began development of an on-campus Asian Studies curriculum. He has been returning to Thailand regularly ever since. He also takes a Hemingway Interim class to Havana, Cuba.
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