Urban historian Becky Nicolaides will give a lecture titled “Exploring Social and Civic Engagement in Postwar Los Angeles Suburbia” at the Chicago History Museum on Thursday, May 10. The lecture is part of the museum’s ongoing Urban History Seminars series. A reception and dinner precede the lecture. The reception begins at 5:45pm, followed by dinner at 6:15pm and the lecture at 7:00pm. Tickets cost $20 and may be purchased online or by phone. The price includes dinner. As in the series’ other seminar sessions, urban scholars from Chicago and the surrounding area will be in attendance.

Becky Nicolaides is a preeminent scholar of new suburban history. She received her PhD in American History from Columbia University in 1993 and presently serves as co-editor for the Historical Studies of Urban America series from University of Chicago Press. She works as an independent scholar, historical consultant, and instructor at UCLA. She is the author of My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) and co-editor with Andrew Wiese of The Suburb Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006). Her current work, On the Ground in Suburbia: A Chronicle of Social and Civic Transformation in Los Angeles since 1945 explores the relationship between the post-war suburban built environment and patterns of social and civic engagement.