I eventually noticed the patient and bemused glances from other customers at the caf\u00e9 where I was reading Katherine Thompson\u2019s WR 150 final essay, \u201cThe Grim Reality Hidden Beneath Freshkills Park\u2019s Bright Fa\u00e7ade.\u201d The more I read, the more excited I became, and I can now remember exclaiming, quite audibly, \u201cNailed it!\u201d and \u201cYou go!\u201d and \u201cWow!\u201d I was simply caught up in the beauty of Katherine\u2019s language and the power of her argument, and, well, I couldn\u2019t contain that silently.<\/p>\n
Katherine hails from Staten Island, and she told me early in the course of the tug that her home and her family held on her. (Indeed, she has recently transferred to NYU to be closer to that area.) But it was her home landscape that she spoke to me about one day after class around the time Essay #1 had been completed. She was already thinking about the final essay, and she wanted to know if she could write about the Freshkills Landfill, an environmental feature that looms figuratively and literally over Staten Island.<\/p>\n
Our environmental history course examines the ambiguous and reciprocal relationships between nature and culture. And in the issues raised by a human-engineered park atop a skanky landfill, Katherine was smart enough to see a whole range of the contested meanings that humans make about nature\u2014and about our manipulation and modification of nature. Her essay begins with the guiding conceptual questions that focused her study, and her opening paragraph defines the conceptual problem she raises along with the claim she argues throughout her essay. I appreciated the exhibits she included, but I especially loved the complexities of her argument. As she examines \u201can ideal, yet manufactured nature\u2026\u201d and \u201cthe silencing of the history of the region,\u201d Katherine is simultaneously giving emphasis to the conviction of her own voice.<\/p>\n
\u2014 FREDERIC FITTS\u00a0<\/strong> I eventually noticed the patient and bemused glances from other customers at the caf\u00e9 where I was reading Katherine Thompson\u2019s WR 150 final essay, \u201cThe Grim Reality Hidden Beneath Freshkills Park\u2019s Bright Fa\u00e7ade.\u201d The more I read, the more excited I became, and I can now remember exclaiming, quite audibly, \u201cNailed it!\u201d and \u201cYou go!\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4801,"featured_media":0,"parent":12112,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12130"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12204,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12130\/revisions\/12204"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWR 150:\u00a0American Environmental History<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"