Camarillo, Calif., Oct. 19, 2010 – Dr. Joan Peters, Associate Professor of English at CSU Channel Islands (CI), will present a reading from her memoir, The Pleasure Principle: A Life in Nine Stories, on Wednesday, Oct. 27 at 7 p.m. in the John Spoor Broome Library, Room 1360. The campus community and public are invited to attend, though seating is limited.
The memoir represents the result of work accomplished on her sabbatical leave and explores her embrace of the radical politics of her childhood, which proved to be the ideas found in her family history. The chapter she will be reading, “The Peckolicks of Kozienice,” is a personal and sociological look at an Eastern European Jewish family. She discovered a connection to the lives of her grandparents and the Eastern European Jews in their shtetl, people with whom she had thought she had no connection.
Peters stated, “Where the pleasure in the title came in was a surprise to me.” She researched at YIVO Jewish Institute for Research in New York City, which since 1940 to today has been a preeminent resource center for East European Jewish Studies. She also interviewed many family members. Peters said, “What I found was a history quite different from the one I’d read about in the Jewish nostalgia books, like The World of Our Fathers.” Instead of joyous togetherness, she found a fierce caste system and a rigid patriarchy.
Limited parking is available on campus. A daily permit is $6. Free parking is available at the Camarillo Metrolink Station/Lewis Road parking lot in Camarillo with bus service to and from the campus. Riders should board the VISTA Bus to the campus; the fare is $1 each way. Buses arrive and depart from the Camarillo Metrolink Station every 30 minutes from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday. For exact times, check the schedule at www.goventura.org.
For additional information contact Rian Medlin at 805-437-3931 or rian.medlin@csuci.edu.
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CSU Channel Islands is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
CI Mission Statement
Placing students at the center of the educational experience, California State University Channel Islands provides undergraduate and graduate education that facilitates learning within and across disciplines through integrative approaches, emphasizes experiential and service learning, and graduates students with multicultural and international perspectives.
