The Rhetorical Ecology of an Urban Wetland Complex

The Hackensack Meadowlands, a feature of the Hackensack-Passaic Watershed, is a thirty square-mile urban and estuarine wetland in northeastern New Jersey on the outskirts of New York City. As urban wetlands have become a priority in the field of environmental management, this dissertation traces the rhetorical ecology of one such contested site (the Meadowlands), highlighting the role of public and professional texts as agents of both knowledge production and landscape change. To that end, I offer two analyses in this dissertation. The first is a genre analysis of technical descriptions derived from a reading of a large collection of texts, including analytical reports, field guides, natural resource inventories, primary scientific literature, and public-facing narratives. The second is an examination of the rhetorical conditions that precipitated the proposed listing of the Lower Hackensack River to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (US EPA’s) National Priorities List. The methods used in this study are grounded in writing studies scholarship (with a dual focus on technical communication and rhetoric), but this work also engages fields as diverse as human geography, literary studies, the environmental humanities, studies of science and technology, environmental planning, and environmental sociology. In the conclusion of the dissertation, I reflect on associated questions of land justice and environmental justice efforts in upstream/downstream relationships and explore the theoretical, practical, and pedagogical implications for technical communication and public writing in the environmental sector.

Author dc:creator

• Dsouza, Evelyn

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/11299/241753

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:conservancy.umn.edu:11299/241753