What would you like Perspectives to be?

Mara H. Benjamin

St. Olaf College

AJS Perspectives, in its present incarnation, is pretty close to ideal. With every issue, I look forward to learning a bit about what my colleagues in far-flung fields are working on. I like how the short essays are paired with an engaging image, and I like the formal and aesthetically pleasing pages. I suggest the following addition to make an already rich publication even more appealing and useful: a digital component linked to AJS Perspectives that would be devoted to explicitly addressing broader trends in the Jewish Studies as a whole. This section would be comparable in content to what appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education, but with a focus on Jewish Studies. I'd like to see AJS members have a place to discuss the rise of MOOCs; diversity and the ever-changing composition of Jewish Studies faculty and the students in our courses; recent moves toward academic boycotts; new possibilities for digital humanities in Jewish studies; the changing role of public and private funding for Jewish Studies programs; trends in financing higher education; and so on. It seems to me that each issue of AJS Perspectives could include a section that would focus on one such issue. A digital component, updated regularly, would include a broader range of perspectives on that same issue, with links to relevant other articles. This digital forum would host news and online conversation about how the featured topic affects our work as researchers and teachers.