Dori Coblentz
Tagline:Lecturer of Technical Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA, USA
About Me
Dori is a Lecturer in Technical Communication and teaches classes on first-year composition, technical communication, and the history of science. In addition to her writing pedagogy research, she specializes in early modern English literature and culture, digital pedagogy, and the history of technical communication. Her monograph, Fencing, Form and Cognition: Artful Devices (Edinburgh UP 2021) explores the ways in which early moderns generated and transmitted practical knowledge about time. Her current project, Inventing Professions: Literature, Science, and Rhetoric in Early Modern Print Culture, examines how early modern scientific writings and technical handbooks worked alongside literary texts to shape emerging ideas of professional identity and knowledge transmission. Building on these themes, Dori's research now extends to generative AI, where she explores similar questions of invention, authorship, and knowledge transmission in her role as chair of Georgia Tech's Writing and Communication Program's AI Working Group.
Curriculum Vitae (CV)
DownloadEducation
PhD
from: 2011, until: 2017Field of study:EnglishSchool:Emory UniversityLocation:Atlanta, GA
DescriptionDissertation :
“Killing Time on the Early Modern Stage: Tempo, Judgment, and the Art of Defense.” Committee: Patricia Cahill (chair), Dalia Judovitz, Ross Knecht, Sharon Strocchia.Master of Arts
from: 2009, until: 2011Field of study:LiteratureSchool:University of California, Santa CruzLocation:Santa Cruz, CA
Bachelor of Arts
from: 2006, until: 2008Field of study:English and Linguistics (double major)School:San Jose State UniversityLocation:San Jose, CA
Publications
Books and Peer Reviewed Articles
Fencing, Form and Cognition on the Early Modern Stage: Artful Devices
BookPublisher:Edinburgh University PressDate:2021Authors:Dori CoblentzDescription:Fencing, Form and Cognition on the Early Modern Stage reveals an underexplored archive of Italian, English and German fencing texts, which were designed explicitly to teach tempo and judgement. This intervention in Shakespeare and Jonson scholarship provides critical new insights into the plots, pacing and characterisation of drama and attends to the ethical and pedagogical work displayed and accomplished by fencing and dramatic devices. It yields a robust theory of active waiting and brings the imbrications of appropriate timing and ethical decision-making to the fore.
Fundamentals of Italian Rapier: A Modern Manual for Teachers and Students of Historical Fencing
BookPublisher:SKA Swordplay BooksDate:2018Authors:Dori CoblentzDavid CoblentzDescription:Fundamentals of Italian Rapier: A Modern Manual for Teachers and Students of Historical Fencing offers a comprehensive theoretical foundation for seventeenth-century rapier fencing. This book pairs descriptions of fencing techniques with over a hundred images, explaining the underlying reasoning for each fencing action as well as offering drills and exercises designed to help students internalize the three fundamentals of Italian rapier fencing: modo, misura, and tempo(technique, measure, and timing). Through a synthesis of Italian fencing manuals for an English-speaking readership, Dori and David Coblentz offer a resource that is both sensitive to historical context and aware of modern trends in fencing instruction.
To Obstruct and Delight: Antagonistic Collaboration for Humanities-STEM Transfer
Journal ArticlePublisher:Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (in review)Date:unpublishedAuthors:Dori CoblentzDescription:"To Obstruct and Delight: Antagonistic Collaboration for Humanities-STEM Transfer" explores how engaging with challenging Renaissance texts, like Sidney’s Defense of Poesy and Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, prepares STEM students to tackle complex, technical texts in their own disciplines. Using a method I call "antagonistic collaboration," the article shows how reading historically distant, opaque material enhances students’ ability to navigate specialized professional texts.
The Swamp and the Scaffold: Ethics and Professional Practice in the Writing Classroom
Journal ArticlePublisher:The WAC Journal 33Date:2022Authors:Dori CoblentzJonathan ShelleyDescription:Instructors within the writing across the curriculum (WAC) movement leverage student writing for learning and engagement beyond the traditional English or composition classroom. To this end, WAC pedagogy foregrounds the benefits of real-world active learning strategies. Educators often find it logistically difficult to create sustainable versions of these realistic environments, however. The same challenges faced by writing instructors present themselves across disciplinary contexts, including ethics and computer science instruction. In this article, we describe our integrated ethics module linking first-year composition students with computer science capstone design teams to better integrate the study of ethics into the writing classroom while giving students more realistic contexts for practice. The tension between two prominent metaphors for learning – the swamp (the messy situationality of professional practice) and the scaffold (the building of progressively more challenging tasks for students out of smaller, simpler assignments) – guides our discussion of WAC-centered course design.
Looking Ahead: Fostering Effective Team Dynamics in the Engineering Classroom and Beyond
Journal ArticlePublisher:Advances in Engineering EducationDate:2021Authors:Mary Lynn RealffDori CoblentzMeltem AlemdarDescription:The Effective Team Dynamics (ETD) Initiative at Georgia Tech developed curriculum to improve function of student teams. ETD uses the language of CliftonStrengths® to help students identify the areas in which they are the strongest and to apply those strengths to interpersonal contexts. ETD has developed curriculum for five “Touchpoints,” or units, beginning with first-year seminar and ending with capstone senior design. Each Touchpoint is modular, and instructors can flexibly integrate the materials drawing on the expertise of ETD’s trained facilitators. Next, ETD will study the effects of team training on students’ persistence in their intended college major, focusing on the persistence of underrepresented minority students.
‘Artificial force and sleight’: Tempo and Dissimulation in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier.
Journal ArticlePublisher:Italian StudiesDate:2017Authors:Dori CoblentzDescription:This essay explores a lost historical connection between literature and the fighting arts over the shared ground of tempo. I illuminate a historically particular model of tempo as antagonistic rhythm of movement, and show how it is central to Castiglione’s understanding of courtiership. Castiglione draws from contemporary fencing pedagogy such as that of Pietro Monte and Antonio Manciolino both on a thematic and a structural level. Thematically, Castiglione uses fencing to illustrate larger points about comely dissimulation. Structurally, the fencing technique of the feint drives Castiglione’s pacing and his conceptualization of sprezzatura as artful, practiced spontaneity.
Killing Time in Titus Andronicus: Timing, Rhetoric, and the Art of Defense
Journal ArticlePublisher:Journal for Early Modern Cultural StudiesDate:2015Authors:Description:Early modern understandings of time have been extensively discussed in relation to Shakespeare’s oeuvre, but this article offers a new understanding of Shakespearean time and timing by analyzing the art of defense in Titus Andronicus. Drawing from the pedagogy of rhetoric on timing, critical conversations about kairos, or opportune time, have typically assumed that waiting on the part of Shakespeare’s avengers is the result of hesitation or madness. However, while rhetorical theory provides a more cooperative model of timing, fencing theory focuses on the interruptive aspect of good timing. Through a reading of English and Continental fencing manuals that shows their investment in a particular understanding of temporality, this essay fleshes out the ways in which Titus Andronicus exemplifies the uniquely disruptive and antagonistic properties of fencing right-timing. These insights reveal a richer, more motivated play than one in which a baffled avenger enacts, by sheer happenstance, a condign revenge. Further, exploring contemporary fencing theory and practice opens up larger questions about timing and narrative craft. This essay argues that the logic of combat, through its emphasis on the tactics of waiting, deeply informed the ways in which early modern dramatists paced their revenge and anti-revenge plays.
Digital Projects
StudentAImpact: A toolkit for teachers of academic writing.
Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center (DILAC) | 2023
According to a May 2023 survey, about a third of college students used ChatGPT for their coursework during the 2022-2023 school year. The most popular subject for ChatGPT assistance? English, at 49%. If you’re reading this, you probably agree that conversational agents are part of higher education now, for better or for worse. The disruption is particularly acute for English and academic writing classes, as instructors and administrators wonder how to meet current student learning objectives around critical thinking and how to prepare students for the employment landscape that will exist when they graduate. These big-picture questions will require complex and multi-disciplinary interventions over the course of years. But what about your next semester’s syllabus?
Explore: https://www.studentaimpact.lmc.gatech.edu
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Jonson Character Cloud
Shakespeare Association of America Digital Exhibits | 2019
Explore: http://jonsonoutlines.com
Reviews
Review of Music, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern English Schools. By Amanda Eubanks Winkler.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP; Renaissance Quarterly 75.3 (2022): 1089-1090 | 2020
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Review of Much Ado About Nothing at The Atlanta Shakespeare Company
Shakespeare Newsletter | 2017
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Review of The Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s Comedy of Errors.
In the Glassy Margents, Shakespeare Newsletter | 2017
Work Experiences
Lecturer of Technical Communication
from: 2021, until: presentOrganization:Georgia Institute of TechnologyLocation:Atlanta, GA
Technical Writer and Analyst, Consultant
from: 2020, until: 2021Organization:Lita, lita.lifeLocation:Atlanta, GA
Grant Writer and Curriculum Developer, Strategic Plan Advisory Group (SPAG)
from: 2019, until: 2021Organization:Effective Team Dynamics Initiative, Georgia Institute of TechnologyLocation:Atlanta, GA
Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship
from: 2017, until: 2021Organization:Georgia Institute of TechnologyLocation:Atlanta, GA
Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry Graduate Dissertation Completion Fellowship
from: 2016, until: 2017Organization:Emory UniversityLocation:Atlanta, GA
Courses Taught
Technical Communication Strategies I and II
from: Jan 2024, until: May 2024
Course Number: LMC 3432 .Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology .
Professional and Technical Communication Postdoctoral Fellows Seminar
from: Aug 2023, until: May 2024
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology .
Invention and/in the Scientific Revolution (Age of the Scientific Revolution, LMC3106)
from: Aug 2023, until: May 2024
Course Number: LMC3106 .Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology .
Rhetoric and Ethics in Technical Communication
from: Aug 2023, until: May 2024
Course Number: LMC 3403 .Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology .
Rhetoric and Ethics in Technical Communication
from: Aug 2022, until: May 2023
Course Number: LMC 3403 .Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology .
Technical Communication Strategies I
from: Aug 2021, until: May 2022
Course Number: LMC 3432 .Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology .
Defending Society
from: Aug 2021, until: May 2022
Course Number: ENGL 1102 .Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology .
Technical Communication Strategies
from: Aug 2017, until: May 2022
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology .
Pedagogical Training
Supporting Course Design with Generative AI, Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning, 2024
Understanding and Using CIOS, Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning, 2022
Activate Learning through Videos, Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning, 2021
How to be an Anti-Racist Educator Workshop, Georgia Tech, 2020
Technical Communication Pedagogy Seminar, Georgia Tech, 2019
Digital Pedagogy Seminar, Georgia Tech, 2017
Charting Shifting Waters: Race (and Whiteness) in the Classroom Workshop, Emory University, 2017
Best Practices for Classroom Accessibility Workshop, Emory University 2016
Pedagogy of Literature Seminar, Emory University, 2014
Teaching of Composition Seminar, Emory University, 2013
Pedagogy of Literature, UC Santa Cruz, 2009.
Grants
Submitted and Funded
Provost Teaching and Learning Initiative Grant. Georgia Tech, “Integrating AI Literacy into GT Writing and Communication Courses,” 2024. (co-authored)
Communication Through Art Program, Communication Through Art Grant. Georgia Tech Library and the Paper Museum, “Fairytale Critical Editions: Bookmaking and Authorship,” 2018.
Pathways Beyond the Professoriate, Professional Development Event Grant. Emory University, 2012.
Submitted, Not Funded
Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources Grant, National Science Foundation Georgia Tech Effective Team Dynamics Initiative, “Enhancing Persistence in Under-Represented Minority STEM Students through Team Dynamics Training,” 2020. (resubmission, co-authored)
Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources Grant, National Science Foundation. Georgia Tech Effective Team Dynamics Initiative, “Enhancing Persistence in Under-Represented Minority STEM Students through Team Dynamics Training,” 2019. (co-authored)
Council of Writing Program Administrators, Research Grant. Georgia Institute of Technology, “Sustaining Partnerships Across Disciplines: Creating and Implementing Course-integrated Assignments,” 2019. (co-authored)
National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Connections Planning Grant. Georgia Institute of Technology, “Ethics Across the Curriculum,” 2018. (co-authored)
Renaissance Society of America, RSA Short Term Fellowship. “Artful Devices on Shakespeare’s Stage,” 2018.
Conference Papers and Presentations
“Beyond the Lab: Milton and Cavendish on Magic, Invention, and the Boundaries of Early Modern Knowledge” Shakespeare Association of America, “Magic, Science, Knowledge, and Popular Belief” session. Boston MA, March 19-22, 2025.
“Inventing Professions: At the Intersection of Early Modern Literature and Science,” Modern language Association: “Literature and Science in the Early Modern Period” session. New Orleans LA, January 9-12, 2025.
“To Obstruct and Delight: Antagonistic Collaboration for Humanities-STEM Transfer.” Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (SMART) digital symposium: “Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students.” Atlanta GA, December 4, 2023.
“Inventing Professions: Fencing, Acting, and Embodied Learning in Early Modern Technical Manuals.” Shakespeare Association of America, “Invention” session. Jacksonville, FL, April 7-9, 2022.
“English with Agility: Managing Digital Projects in Writing and Literature Courses.” Modern Language Association: “When Text Moves: Teaching Digital Writing Projects” session. Seattle WA, January 9-12, 2020
“Forming Plots on the Early Modern Stage.” Shakespeare Association of America: “Shakespeare’s Forms” seminar. Washington DC, April 17-20, 2019.
“Vapors, Puppets, and Tempo in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair.” Renaissance Society of America conference. New Orleans, LA. March 22-24, 2018.
“Cognition, Embodiment, and Temporality in Early Modern English Fencing Manuals.” Shakespeare Association of America: “Cognition in the Early Modern Period” seminar. Atlanta, GA. April 5-8, 2017.
“The Courtier’s ‘trade of disporting’: Games, Tempo, and Dissimulation in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier.” Renaissance Society of America conference. Chicago, IL. March 30-April 1, 2017.
“‘Why, how long shall he live?’: Making Time for Murder in Arden of Faversham.” International Medieval Congress. Kalamazoo, MI. May 11-14, 2016.
“Arden’s Plot: Space and Pace in Arden of Faversham.” Shakespeare Association of America: “Arden of Faversham” seminar. New Orleans, LA. March 23-26, 2016.
“Making, Writing, Thinking: Materialist Philosophy and the Maker Movement in the Composition Classroom.” Pedagogy, Practice, and Philosophy.” University of Florida’s Writing Program conference. Gainesville, FL. January 28, 2016.
“Knowing Touches in The Comedy of Errors.” Shakespeare Association of America: “New Histories of Embodiment” seminar. Vancouver, BC. April 1-4, 2015.
“‘Governe Thy Weapon and Also Thy Selfe’: Fencing and Belief in the English Renaissance." Bodies of Belief: Somaesthetics of Faith and Protest conference. Boca Raton, FL. January 29-February 1, 2015.
“Between the Before and the After: Time, Touch, and Tactics in Early Modern Fencing Manuals.” SAMLA 85 (South Atlantic Modern Language Association) conference. Atlanta, GA. November 9-11, 2013.
Professional Service
WCP AI Working Group
from: 2023, until: presentOrganization:Georgia Institute of Technology
Search Committee for Undergraduate Research Opportunities Academic Professional
from: 2022, until: 2022Organization:Georgia Institute of Technology
Technical Communication Seminar solo and co-facilitator
from: 2021, until: 2024Organization:Georgia Institute of Technology
Grant Writing Committee
from: 2018, until: presentOrganization:Georgia Institute of Technology
Hiring Committee
from: 2018, until: 2023Organization:Georgia Institute of Technology
Programmatic Assessment
from: 2017, until: presentOrganization:Georgia Institute of Technology
President of Emory’s Early Modern and Medieval Colloquium
from: 2013, until: 2015Organization:Emory University
President of Emory’s Early Modern English Reading Group
from: 2012, until: 2013Organization:Emory University
Co-Chair of Emory’s Brown Bag Committee
from: 2012, until: 2013Organization:Emory University
Memberships
Association of Teachers of Technical Writing
from: 2019, until: presentShakespeare Association of America
from: 2014, until: presentModern Language Association
from: 2008, until: presentRenaissance Society of America
from: 2008, until: present
Contact
Address
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Literature, Media, and Communication
686 Cherry St. NW
Atlanta, GA 30313