4145 Country Club Road
The Summer Levy Series has become a welcoming of summer, and an occasion to socialize, share a wonderful meal, and feed our minds with a variety of inspiring presentations and discussions. Please join us. The program and menu for this event is below – call 608-442-4081 to register at a cost of $25 per person.
Erin Faigin – “I Don’t Want To Say a Valley Girl is a ‘JAP’: The San Fernando Valley, Valley Girls, and Postwar Jewish Upward Mobility”
Erin Faigin will describe the relationship between the Valley Girl of the 1980’s and the Jewish American Princess as a way to understand postwar American Jewish upward mobility. Her research explores the relationship between upward mobility, misogyny, and antisemitism in the imagined and real lives of American Jewish women during the Reagan years and beyond. By looking at popular media (SNL, Valley Girl, Clueless), national scandal (the Monica Lewinsky tapes), and lived experience (including that of the nose job), Faigin’s research demonstrates the limits of the assimilationist paradigm to explain postwar American Jewish history. Even in Los Angeles, even blonde, Jews suburbanized as Jews.
Faigin herself hails from the San Fernando Valley of Valley Girl fame, but she has lived in Madison since 2017. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in American Jewish History and has written and researched diverse topics such as Utah’s Yiddish utopias, Chicago’s interwar Jewish bookstore culture, and now, the Jewish American Princess.
Lunch: Seasonal fruit plate, dinner rolls & mini muffins, Mahi Mahi with toasted kale Buerre Blanc or Sun-dried tomato and asparagus quiche in puff pastry, Yukon Gold potatoes, green bean bundle wrapped in carrot. Dessert: Dark chocolate ganache three-layer cake