Beasts of Suburbia: Reinterpreting Cultures in Australian Suburbs

by Sarah Ferber (Editor)

Beasts of Suburbia explores the ways in which the ideas and actualities of suburban experience have circulated in Australia. The dream of an ideal life is conjured up in the garden suburbs of the early twentieth century and in the project homes of recent years. Bitter and ambivalent responses to the suburbs are recorded in the visual arts and cinema. The dramatic variety of suburban lifestyles are traced in studies of Aboriginal suburbs in Alice Springs and the gentrified inner-city suburbs of Melbourne. The complex ideological position of the suburb is examined when the outer regions of Sydney overtake a previously isolated nuclear reactor.

257 pages, Paperback