The first yearbook of the Michigan College of Mines (1915–1916) included a feature about the short-lived student drama club, the “Micomi Club” (1911–1914). It was ending because male students could no longer play female characters: “no mining engineer could be a lady.” Using historical case study methods, this article argues that the yearbook feature demonstrates, in content, worries about the destabilizing potential of drag performance and, in form, the uses of humor in technical writing.

I argue that historical urban planning documents are important technical communication documents because of the ways they have shaped the lived world in ways harmful to marginalized communities. I illustrate this through analysis of a document from the first federal housing project in the US My analysis shows that, despite the document's attempted neutrality, it uses language to racialize the city's population and move agendas of structural racism into material spaces.

The reports the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) requires of its members provide an opportunity to study the shifting role of the private sector within the regime of human rights discourse. Using British Petroleum as a case study, I combine technical communication theories of power with Foucault's concept of governmentality to examine the rhetorical strategies in UNGC-BP communications, finding a disconnect between human rights principles and company reporting that validates rather than rejects corporate violence.

Through qualitative interviews with seven professional and technical writers (PTWs) who majored in literature or creative writing, this study examines how students' emotions and beliefs about English as literary brought them to major in English but also limited their confidence in pursuing writing careers. Findings suggest that PTW concentrations in traditional English departments must account for their majors' affinity for the literary while also providing sufficient coursework that helps them understand how English actually leads to specific writing careers.

As digital technologies rapidly evolve, updating and enhancing models of digital literacy pedagogy in technical and professional communication (TPC) becomes more urgent. In this article, we use "digital life" to conceptualize the ever-changing ways of knowing and being in postinternet society. Using collaborative autoethnography, we investigate features of threshold concepts in TPC pedagogy that may support models of digital literacy that are resistant to tools-based definitions, foster student agency, and facilitate accessibility, equity, and justice.