Colin Shanafelt

Colin Shanafelt is an author, educator, veteran, and digital-learning innovator whose work integrates literature, rhetoric, and emerging technologies. He serves as an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Rhetoric & Writing at The University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses in rhetoric, critical reading, and persuasive writing. His professional focus includes helping guide the responsible evolution of artificial intelligence in writing and education, with an emphasis on ethical innovation and intellectual growth while enhancing human achievement and productivity.

As a novelist, children’s author, and textbook writer, Shanafelt’s publications include What Gods Would Be Theirs?, One Thing Right, and Literary Analysis & Writing Guide. His forthcoming novel, Apotheosis, chronicles the emergence of general artificial intelligence via quantum computing. As a developer of multimodal learning resources, he has created online instructional guides for rhetoric and writing, an interactive glossary of rhetorical terms, the LitNotes video lecture series, and a suite of mobile applications for students of composition and literature. In 2012, the success of his mobile application work enabled him to travel around the world with his wife and daughter, visiting twenty-five countries in fifteen months, an experience that continues to inform his teaching, writing, and global perspective.

Shanafelt is a veteran of the United States Air Force, where he supported forward air-control operations during combat deployments to South America and the Middle East. His service included technical communications, field logistics, and mobile ground-based support for joint teams operating in dynamic, hostile environments.