Becky Nicolaides, Ph.D.
Research Scholar since 2007
bnicolaides@ucla.edu

Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University, 1993.

Presently series co-editor for the University of Chicago Press’ Historical Studies of Urban America series, and serving on board of directors of the Urban History Association, board of councilors of the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch, and the editorial board of the Journal of Urban History.

Recipient of a 2007-08 research fellowship at the Huntington Library, San Marino.

Formerly Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego. Departed in 2006 after commuting between LA and San Diego for 9 years. Lives in Los Angeles with actor husband and two high-energy kids.

Into the Suburban Fold: A Social History of Postwar Suburban America.
This project explores the relationship between community and the built environment of suburbia since 1945.  In recent years, a spate of studies has suggested that social capital has been in decline in America since the 1970s, and suburban sprawl is often implicated in this trend.  While such claims are mostly made by political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists, historians have yet to weigh in. My goal with this book is to enter into this discourse and bring to it both a historical perspective and an appreciation for the great diversity of suburban experiences since 1945.  The relationship between the built environment and social/civic engagement, I believe, holds profound implications for our society – in politics, urban planning, gender relations, and quality of life, among other things. This book will aim to explore the multiple impacts that suburbia has had on recent American life, and to assess the implications.

Becky M. Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese, eds., The Suburb Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006).
www.planetizen.com/
books/2007

My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
www.press.uchicago.edu/
cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/14735.ctl

“How Hell Moved from the City to the Suburbs: Urban Scholars and Changing Perceptions of Authentic Community,” in The New Suburban History, eds. Kevin Kruse and Tom Sugrue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

 “The Neighborhood Politics of Class in a Working-Class Suburb of Los Angeles, 1920-1940,” Journal of Urban History, 30 (March 2004): 428-451.

 “Suburbia and the Sunbelt,” and “Lesson Plan: How to Read a Suburb,” OAH Magazine of History, 18 (October 2003).

“‘Where the working man is welcomed’: Working-class suburbia in Los Angeles, 1900-1940.” Pacific Historical Review 68, 4 (November 1999): 517-559.  Reprinted (with changes) in Michael Roth and Charles Salas, eds., Looking at Los Angeles: Architecture, Film, Photography and the Urban Landscape (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001).

“The state’s ‘sharp line between the sexes’: Women, alcohol, and the law in the United States, 1850­1980.” Addiction  91, 8 (August 1996): 1211-1229.