BECKY'S BIO

Research affiliate at:
UCLA Center for the Study of Women
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

I'm a historian specializing in American cities, suburbs, and metro areas.   I earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in American history at Columbia University, then served on the faculties at Arizona State University West and UC San Diego, where I was tenured in 2001.  During my 9 years at UCSD, I taught hundreds of students, wrote two books, got married, had a kid, and did a monster commute from Los Angeles to La Jolla. 

In 2006, when our second kid arrived, I left "traditional" academia to become a historical scholar, writer, and consultant based in Los Angeles.  My work focuses on the history of North American suburbanization. I've been especially interested in exploring histories of suburban diversity, breaking free of "Ozzie and Harriet" stereotypes to discover what happened when workers, the poor, immigrants and ethnic and racial groups became suburbanites.  My first book My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago 2002), told the story of blue-collar suburbanites in southeast Los Angeles, and how their everyday lives shaped their political sensibilities - they ultimately ended up as Reagan Democrats.  It won best book awards from the AHA-Pacific Coast Branch and the Historical Society of Southern California. My second book The Suburb Reader 1st and 2nd editions (Routledge, 2006/2016), is co-edited with my long-time friend and collaborator Andy Wiese.  It's a big, broad survey of North American suburban history, with tons of great documents, essays, illustrations, and scholarly excerpts to ground you in how the suburbs started, how they got to where they are today, and some ideas for moving forward in more sustainable, equitable ways.  My current book project, On the Ground in Suburbia: A Chronicle of Social and Civic Life in Los Angeles, 1945-2000, explores everyday life in our changing suburban world.  I've also written articles, blogs, and op-eds, for the New York Times, Washington Post, and academic publications - the recent stuff coming out of my On the Ground project.

I've also worked as a consultant over the years - on historic preservation projects for Survey LA, the LA Conservancy, and the state of California, and for various film projects. I also dove deeply into the history of alcohol use in America while working on my PhD, on a big federally funded project that led to a one-year postdoc at UC Berkeley and one of my earliest academic publications. I am a co-editor for the “Historical Studies of Urban America” series published by University of Chicago Press and co-coordinator of the L.A History and Metro Studies group at the Huntington Library.  I'm currently serving a 3-year term on the Governing Council (Research Division) of the American Historical Association, where I've been advocating on the issue of democratizing research access for all scholars, particularly those working outside of academia.

I've given over 50 lectures and presentations, including talks at Princeton, UC Berkeley, UCLA, George Tech, and University of Exeter, UK.  I am an affiliated scholar at UCLA and USC.  I'm married to a brilliant actor-engineer, with two kids and a dog, and we live --  surprise, surprise -- in the suburbs.