Learning to be suburban: the production of community in Westwood Hills, Pennsylvania, 1952–1958

In 1952, working-class women in the newly built suburb of Westwood Hills, Pennsylvania began publishing a mimeographed newsletter entitled The Hilltrotter. They used the newsletter to shape their community and by doing so learned and taught how to be suburban. This process occurred both discursively and materially, as the staff of The Hilltrotter simultaneously sought to create a shared conception of community and to shape the everyday lives of Westwood Hills' residents. This paper investigates the work of women on The Hilltrotter and by doing so shows how they produced a constellation of identities – of community, class, age, gender, and citizenship. They constructed these identities through their efforts to make Westwood Hills into a safe, stable, and well-ordered suburban community. In doing so they contributed to the formation of a postwar hegemonic order that enlisted the working class in the reproduction of capitalism.