Making Sense of Suburbia through Popular Culture

We all know what suburbia is, indeed the majority of us live in it. Yet, despite this ubituity, with no formal definition of the contept, the suburbs have developed in our collective imagination through representations in popular culture, from Terry and Juneto Desparate Housewives.Rupa Huq examines how suburbia has been depicted in novels, cinema, popular music and on television, charting changing trends both in the suburbs and popular media consumption and production. She looks at the differences in defining suburbia in the US and UK and how characteristics associated with it have shifted in meaning and form.

Rupa Huq is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University.

Seeking Culture in a Cultural Void? The relationship Between Suburbia and Popular CultureWriting Suburbia: The Periphery in NovelsThe Sound of the Suburbs: Noise From Out of Nowhere?Pastoral Paradises and Social Realism: Cinematic Representations of Suburban ComplexitySuburbia on the BoxWomen on the Edge? Representations of the Postwar Suburban Woman in Popular Culture to the Present DayConclusion: Towards a Rewritten Heterogeneity of Suburbia