The New Suburbia - Lecture by Becky Nicolaides
On Thursday, September 19 from 4-6pm in the Anatol Center, Dr. Becky Nicolaides will give a talk based on her new monograph, The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945 (Oxford UP, 2024). Dr. Nicolaides plans to discuss the history of Lakewood, which is one of four community case studies she addresses in the latter half of her book.
Description of The New Suburbia:
America’s suburbs have been transforming. The conventional story of suburbs as bastions of white, middle-class homeowners no longer describes the suburbs of America’s cities. Today they house a more typical cross-section of the nation—rich, poor, Black American, Latino, Asian, immigrant, the unhoused, the lavishly housed, and everyone in between. Stories of everyday suburban life, in the process, have taken on new inflections. Nowhere are these changes more vivid than in Los Angeles. In this suburban metropolis and global powerhouse, over two-thirds of the County’s suburbs have become majority minority. Examining this vanguard of change from the postwar to the present, The New Suburbia follows the Asian Americans, Black Americans, and Latinos who moved into white neighborhoods that once barred them. Nicolaides draws on quantitative data spanning 70 years and over 60 unpublished oral histories and interviews to explore vital landscapes where the American dream has endured, even as the dreamers have changed.
Author biography:
Becky Nicolaides is a historian and consultant specializing in the history of suburbs, metro areas, and Los Angeles. She is the author of three books, including My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (University of Chicago, 2002) and The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945 (Oxford, 2024). Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other outlets. She is a Research Affiliate at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, and she is co-founder of the consulting firm History Studio. She also served on the LA Mayor's Office Civic Memory Working Group.
Please share the attached flyer with students. This event is sponsored by the Department of History, the Department of American Studies, and the Department of Sociology. Everyone is welcome to attend. We hope you and your students will join us.
