Abstract
One of the goals of feminist rhetorical scholarship is to recover women’s voices, and feminist historiographies in various global locations expand disciplinary boundaries and allow us to learn from past practices. Moreover, scholars have argued for the necessity of understanding the history of technical and professional communication (TPC) in illuminating the power dynamics that shape the field (Sutcliffe, 1998), yet limited scholarship on women’s history outside of Euro-western contexts has been conducted (Petersen, 2017). TPC has a problematic history of focusing on Euro-western narratives (Hass, 2012). My research seeks to address this problem by recovering women’s histories and recognizing various cultures and contexts in TPC practice in order to transfer and learn from those ideas; international histories give researchers a better understanding of rhetorical practices globally. My paper focuses on the Women’s Finance House Botswana (WFHB), an activist organization meant to provide small loans and business training to women entrepreneurs in the 1990s. I studied the WFHB papers, which include memos, meeting minutes, brochures, and training materials, at the Botswana National Archives in Gaborone. The documents represent the communication practices of women helping women and highlight how organizations use documentation to engage in activist work. I analyze the WFHB’s documents from a rhetorical perspective to bolster what we know about women’s documented communication historically and give an international perspective on the practice and teaching of TPC. This study adds to conversations of legitimacy, globalization, and communication across contexts.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Communications and Linguistic Studies
KEYWORDS
Rhetoric, Communication, Feminist Histories, Archival Research, Botswana, Documentation, Activism
