Graduation Term

Summer 2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of English

Committee Chair

Angela Haas

Committee Member

Julie Jung

Committee Member

Rachel Gramer

Abstract

In this dissertation, I study the intersection of legal literacies, housing justice, and technical documentation in technical and professional communication (TPC). Specifically, I examine the complicity of TPC documents (i.e., tenancy agreements) in tenancy oppression in Ghana, focusing on how they are designed and used to disenfranchise tenants, formalize tenancy oppression, and uphold asymmetrical power structures among housing stakeholders (e.g., tenants, house owners, rent control officers, etc.) in the private rental market in Ghana, specifically in Accra. Using my newly developed Glocal Intersectional Justice (GIJ) methodology, I design two decolonial case studies, in which I conduct a rhetorical analysis of the current tenancy law of Ghana—the Rent Act, 1963 (Act 220), and tenancy agreements and stories from tenant-participants through oral-history sharing.

This dissertation responds to multiple rhetorical exigencies (e.g., public, scholarly, legal, and curricular and pedagogical) that expand social justice, decolonial, and rhetorical work of public laws and policies, housing documentation genres, and housing literacy practices in TPC in a Global South context. The research findings present decolonial approaches to (re)designing tenancy agreements in an equitable user-centered manner, revising the obsolete Rent Act to meet the contemporary housing realities of Ghanaians, and representing marginalized tenant stories that are often-occluded in public housing discourses in Ghana. Ultimately, this dissertation offers an undergraduate legal rhetorics and literacies course that empowers TPC students with a rhetorical understanding of the law and nudges TPC as a discipline committed to solving problems to intervene in the contemporary glocal housing crisis through user-centered techni-legal documentation.

Access Type

Dissertation-Open Access

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