Dissertation Information for Jennifer Lynne KalishNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: Myth, memory and sprawl: Community building in the San Fernando Valley during the post-World War II era Abstract: This dissertation provides an analysis of post-World War II community building. It is designed to challenge gender and class stereotypes normally associated with new, mass-produced postwar suburbs. It utilizes the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles as its lens to view the experience of that vast group of Americans who purchased new, typically mass produced homes roughly between 1945-1960 and to explore the lives of families who attempted to build strong communities in places where fields of agriculture or only small towns had been. The purpose of this study is to help clarify the meaning of postwar community building for the residents who experienced it and to challenge how historians have interpreted this experience. Histories of postwar development still rely heavily on stereotypes that associate rapidly growing communities (whether they lie inside city boundaries or are independent suburbs) with conformity, middle class exclusivity, and traditional domestic ideology. By tracing the history of San Fernando Valley communities and by utilizing oral history and census data, we see that these stereotypes do not hold. Between 1940 and 1960 the San Fernando Valley transformed from an agricultural hinterland of Los Angeles to a center of industrial, commercial, and retail development. The San Fernando Valley came to be comprised of a collection of socio-economically diverse communities, it had growing communities of color, and families were not governed by the dictates of an overarching domestic ideology. Though the experiences in this region by no means represent the only model for postwar community building, the multi-layers of Valley community life provide a unique window to view postwar culture, allowing us to move beyond suburban myth and thus to instead explore the richness of reality. |
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