Although the field of illustration is a major topic in technical and professional communication (TPC), social justice regarding medical illustrations is yet to be investigated. Drawing from an analysis of TPC journals, program websites, textbooks, and syllabi, this study explores how TPC could advance a social justice view on medical illustration, especially in the textbooks that we use in teaching medical and science writing courses. Not only did we find that very few medical and science writing textbooks included illustrations, but a significant number of illustrations were white. We suggest intentionality in the choice of pedagogical materials, overt discussion of social justice in the curriculum, and critical borrowing of pedagogical materials.

I propose Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) as an approach for understanding the discursive and material implications of technical documents in distant sites. I provide a historical vignette of MCDA and exemplify how technical and professional communication (TPC) researchers can critically engage with distant sites through MCDA by analyzing materials about GhanaPostGPS, a geolocation technology. I conclude by discussing limitations of MCDA – access to archives – and propose the creation of crowdsourced technical documentation archives.