Food Fights: Cookbook Rhetorics, Monolithic Constructions of Womanhood, and Field Narratives in Technical Communication: Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol 25 , No 1

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ABSTRACT

Field narratives that (re)classify technical genres as liberating for women risk supporting the notion that feminism is a completed project in technical communication scholarship. This article suggests that technical communicators reexamine the impact of past approaches to critical engagement at the intersections of gender studies and technical communication; cookbooks provide a material example. The authors illustrate how a feminist approach to cookbooks as technical/cultural artifacts can productively revise field narratives in technical communication.

KEYWORDS:

Cookbooks
feminist theory
gender research
history of technical communication
rhetoric
technology
textual analysis
womanhood

Notes

1. Allen (Citation1990) also notes this trend in a 1990 article in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, “The Case Against Defining Technical Writing.” Allen makes the point that we should not put hard limits on a definition of technical communication, as the effects of such limitations can close off our abilities to critically engage.

2. To be clear, a number of scholars had already done work at the intersections of feminisms and/or gender studies and technical communication prior to this publication (Allen, Citation1994; Bernhardt, Citation1992; Bosley, Citation1992, Citation1994; Brunner, Citation1991; Carrell, Citation1991; Dell, Citation1992; E. Flynn, Savage, Penti, Brown, & Watke, Citation1991; Gurak & Bayer, Citation1994; LaDuc & Goldrick-Jones, Citation1994; Lay, Citation1989, Citation1991, Citation1993; Neeley, Citation1992; Raign & Sims, Citation1993; Rifkind & Harper, Citation1992; Ross, Citation1994; Sauer, Citation1992, Citation1994; Tebeaux & Lay, Citation1992). Our point is that Durack’s (Citation1997) call widened the scope of such work and made possible some of the feminist work in technical communication that has emerged since (Haas, Tulley, & Blair, Citation2002; Herrick, Citation1999; Ingram & Parker, Citation2002; Koerber, Citation2000; Overman Smith & Thompson, Citation2002; Thompson, Citation1999; Wolfe & Alexander, Citation2005).

3. See research cited in the previous footnote for further discussions of feminist work in technical communication.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marie E. Moeller

Marie E. Moeller is an associate professor of technical and professional communication at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Her research interests include disability and gender studies in technical communication, health communication, and online writing pedagogy.

Erin A. Frost

Erin A. Frost is an assistant professor of technical and professional communication at East Carolina University. Her research interests include feminisms and gender studies in technical communication, health care policy, risk communication, and teaching with technology.

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Food Fights: Cookbook Rhetorics, Monolithic Constructions of Womanhood, and Field Narratives in Technical Communication

Notes on contributors

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Erin A. Frost

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Food Fights: Cookbook Rhetorics, Monolithic Constructions of Womanhood, and Field Narratives in Technical Communication

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Notes on contributors

Marie E. Moeller

Erin A. Frost

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