User Agency, Technical Communication, and the 19th-Century Woman Bicyclist

Abstract

This article considers how users employ extraorganizational technical communication to reshape technologies, both materially and symbolically, even after these technologies enter into common use. Specifically, I analyze how women bicyclists of the 1890s authored instructional materials to complicate gendered and classed assumptions about users implicit in manufacturer-produced texts. I argue that technical communicators, in their teaching and research, should consider the role that extraorganizational technical communication plays in generating vital and lasting cultural changes.

Keywords:

• feminist rhetoric
• gender and communication
• history of technology
• history of technical communication
• technical communication and culture

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Hallenbeck

Sarah Hallenbeck is an assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she teaches courses in technical and professional writing and the history of rhetoric.