The recent uptick in TPC scholarship related to decolonial methods, methodologies, and praxis warrants careful consideration about how this framework is used in TPC scholarship. Using a critique of decolonial scholars, the authors reconsider their use of “decolonial” to describe their experience with urban foraging as a practice that subverts modern Euro-Western foodways. This article uses experiential narrative as a way to theorize about technology as it relates to decolonial perspectives on bodies and nutrition.

As the field of technical and professional communication (TPC) has moved toward more inclusive perspectives, the use of decolonial frameworks has increased rapidly. However, TPC scholarship designed using decolonial frameworks lacks a clear, centralized definition and may overgeneralize and/or marginalize Indigenous concerns. Using a corpus analysis of TPC texts, we assess the ways that the field uses "decolonial" and propose a centralized definition of "decolonial" that focuses on rematriation of Indigenous land and knowledges. Further, we offer a heuristic that aids scholars in communication design appropriate for decolonial research and teaching strategies.

Informed by the social justice turn, this article highlights the often-overlooked voices and experiences of women working in technical and professional communication in the Global South, specifically in India. Using an apparent feminist frame, this article highlights the networked identities and forces of power at play that can marginalize Indian practitioners in globalized workplaces. Further, it seeks to understand the ways Indian women exercise and establish professional legitimacy by utilizing apparently feminist tactics.

This article explores activism in a 1990s comic produced by a South African women’s activist group. The comic, written in Zulu, attempts to mobilize women through the use of narrative and personal connection (focusing on domestic violence) and teaches about politics and oppression through pictures and stories. Understanding how this comic was designed for a specific audience provides context for producing creative documentation in localized contexts and highlights the complexities of writing within colonial systems.

Scholars have given much weight to the question of professional legitimacy in the field of TPC, but much of that focus has been given to practitioners in Euro-Western contexts. However, practitioners in India have also worked to strengthen their own legitimacy in a variety of ways, including by harnessing existing structural mechanisms. This article addresses the founding of the Society for Technical Communication India chapter in 1999 and its subsequent organizational impact as a mechanism toward improving the legitimacy of the field in India. It covers a historical analysis of the founding years of the Society for Technical Communication India chapter and discusses ways that founding members and early participants worked to build their own legitimacy.

Introduction: As technical and professional communication (TPC) becomes increasingly networked, students must learn to work cross-culturally. However, these skills can be difficult to develop. We report on a service-learning project aimed at helping students write and design for an audience in India. About the case: The authors saw a need to provide course materials to practitioners in India that became an opportunity to involve students in global content creation. This teaching case reports on two courses designed collaboratively to teach design and communication skills through service-learning, while providing course content to Indian practitioners of TPC. Situating the case: Technical communication has a long history of teaching writing skills for the globalized workplace. Service-learning opportunities can engage students cross-culturally while encouraging them to think critically about audience awareness. This case extends the literature by reporting on how students learned principles of cross-cultural and accessible communication. Methods/approach: This study uses qualitative student reflection documents from two courses to answer questions about how service-learning opportunities shape student skills. Their responses illustrate the successes and failures in the course designs and provide strategies for instructors working on similar projects. Results/discussion: Students reported that their experiences helped them to think critically about audience awareness, synthesize skills in collaboration, engage flexibly with new technologies, and work through time constraints. Conclusion: We provide practical suggestions for implementing similar course designs at other institutions and information about implementing relevant technologies. It outlines adaptations for new teaching environments.

This article aims to help doctoral students in technical communication prepare themselves for the academic job market and for the subsequent process of earning tenure and promotion in increasingly demanding environments. The authors propose that students do four things: (a) learn to spot and articulate research problems; (b) find their vocation—the work to which they feel a personal calling—within technical communication; (c) identify the research methods that best suit their personalities; and (d) articulate a research identity and agenda that they can explain at three different levels of abstraction: describing individual projects, naming the coherent themes that connect these projects, and defining themselves concisely as scholars. All these orienting practices involve students in stepping back, looking for larger patterns in their work and in their professional interests, and finding specific language to represent them.