Dissertation title: Land After Technology: Collective Memory and the New York City Water Supply
PhD Candidate | History and Sociology of Science - University of Pennsylvania
Between 1905 and 1965, New York City constructed a vast water supply system in rural New York, covering some two-thousand square miles of land. To build this system, the city inundated more than twenty communities across five rural counties and dramatically transformed lifeways and livelihood in the region. My dissertation offers a new layer of nuance to conversations about relationships between and among rural and urban communities, highlighting the ways in which a history of resource use may be leveraged to tell stories about contemporary politics. Urban communities rely on vast networks of social and material relations which may span both physical, geographical boundaries and sociocultural ones. By focusing on the rural region which provides ninety percent of New York City’s water, my research suggests that cities like New York must be meaningfully engaged with life, lifeways, and livelihood in the regions from which they draw necessary resources.