The Tree at the Center: Reconstructing Landscape History and Analysis in the American Landscape's Periphery.

For the United States, its natural identity is its national identity. This dissertation addresses the limitations of landscape history and analysis in the American periphery. Power structures and rigid, myopic narratives are agitated around the creation, expansion, and maintenance of the American landscape. Focusing on Hawai‘i, a biography of landscape is produced using culturally and ecologically significant species, specifically ʻŌhiʻa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha). Thus, the dissertation offers an expanded means of understanding and criticism around America's infatuation with its landscape, its frontiers, and its projection using a synthetic means of landscape history and analysis with novel design research methods.