This book examines the ordinary postwar house as a physical framework for racial, class, and ethnic assimilation for a large number of Americans between 1945 and 1960. By examining the house as a framework for negotiation of identity and notions of the self, issues related to race, class, and gender become central. In eight chapters, this book examines the cultural work performed by houses intended for a middle-class audience, and by textual and visual representations of those houses that entered mainstream culture between 1945 and 1960 in the United States. Little White Houses specifically examines the ways such houses constructed and reinforced ideas about personal, family, and even national identity conceived here particularly in terms of race and class formation.

Dianne Harris is director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities and professor of landscape architecture, architecture, art history, and history at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches courses in landscape and in architectural history. She holds a BA in landscape architecture, an MA  in architecture, and a PhD in architectural history from the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to authoring numerous books, articles, and edited volumes, she is the editor for the University of Pittsburgh Press's series Culture, Politics, and the Built Environment. She is the current president of the Society of Architectural Historians.