City, suburban and pastoral spaces and the formation of identity in Cold War America (1945-1965)
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis focuses on the culture and literature of Cold War America and seeks to challenge accepted notions and assumptions about this era and its culture, pointing ultimately to the possibilities for transgression or escape from enforced homogeneity. Using feminist theories, urban theory, and a cultural materialist approach, this thesis employs the work of Judith Butler (1993, 1999), Elizabeth Grosz (1994, 1995, 2001, 2008) and Beatriz Colomina (1992, 2004), and draws on the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, to undertake an examination of subjectivity and its relation to built and landscape environments of the Cold War, enabling an investigation that includes literary texts and criticism, visual and media culture, and cultural, architectural and technological discourses. This study of identity examines the way in which bodies react to and are shaped by their surroundings engaging with sights (Disneyland, The Monsanto House of the Future & the Playboy Mansion), places (New York City, Southern American states and suburbia) texts, and objects (television & cook books). Racial, sexual and youth identities are examined in chapter one, through the street spaces of Ralph Ellisonʼs Invisible Man (1952), the works of the Beats, Hubert Selby Jrʼs Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964), and Salingerʼs The Catcher in the Rye (1951) illustrating how street identities manage to complicate the purported containment of the era, and blurring the distinction between public display and private spectacle where transgressive personae can find authenticity of selfhood from within their urban location. Chapter two considers suburban gender identities and their manufactured proscription through architecture and technology as presented in Richard Yatesʼ Revolutionary Road (1961), John Cheeverʼs short stories, Vladimir Nabakovʼs Lolita (1958), John Updikeʼs Rabbit, Run (1960) and Sloan Wilsonʼs The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), each examined in order to question containment, surveillance and gender p…
abstract: This thesis focuses on the culture and literature of Cold War America and seeks to challenge accepted notions and assumptions about this era and its culture, pointing ultimately to the possibilities for transgression or escape from enforced homogeneity. Using feminist theories, urban theory, and a cultural materialist approach, this thesis employs the work of Judith Butler (1993, 1999), Elizabeth Grosz (1994, 1995, 2001, 2008) and Beatriz Colomina (1992, 2004), and draws on the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, to undertake an examination of subjectivity and its relation to built and landscape environments of the Cold War, enabling an investigation that includes literary texts and criticism, visual and media culture, and cultural, architectural and technological discourses. This study of identity examines the way in which bodies react to and are shaped by their surroundings engaging with sights (Disneyland, The Monsanto House of the Future & the Playboy Mansion), places (New York City, Southern American states and suburbia) texts, and objects (television & cook books). Racial, sexual and youth identities are examined in chapter one, through the street spaces of Ralph Ellisonʼs Invisible Man (1952), the works of the Beats, Hubert Selby Jrʼs Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964), and Salingerʼs The Catcher in the Rye (1951) illustrating how street identities manage to complicate the purported containment of the era, and blurring the distinction between public display and private spectacle where transgressive personae can find authenticity of selfhood from within their urban location. Chapter two considers suburban gender identities and their manufactured proscription through architecture and technology as presented in Richard Yatesʼ Revolutionary Road (1961), John Cheeverʼs short stories, Vladimir Nabakovʼs Lolita (1958), John Updikeʼs Rabbit, Run (1960) and Sloan Wilsonʼs The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), each examined in order to question containment, surveillance and gender p…
author: Mackay, A
language: en
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:42:53Z
provider: Oxford Brookes University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Oxford Brookes University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.24384/8ft4-s560