City Water: Urban Rivers as Cultural Infrastructure

My dissertation makes the argument that in order to ensure human survival in the age of climate crisis, we must re-examine our relationship with the polluted, disregarded water flows at the heart of our cities. It uses a mixed methodology of close reading of novels and films, computational analysis of urban rhetoric and authethnographic descriptions of rivers to examine what urban water flows have come to mean in an age in which all our water needs are mediated via a tap.

Table of Contents: Preface: Weelaunee, and what a Creek Reveals. Chapter 1: The New York Estuary: Rivers as Future Tellers Chapter 2: The L.A. River: Recursive History Chapter 3: The ELbe River System: Leben as Bleiben Conclusion: Rivers as People