In a somewhat traditional sense, I see a continued role of AJS Perspectives as a reflection of the professional organization that represents our interests and serves our professional needs as scholars of Jewish Studies. I would like AJS Perspectives to be a vehicle for keeping up with developments across the breadth of Jewish Studies, especially for keeping up with developments in subfields other than my own, and for wider issues that connect with the work we do as scholars. That doesn't mean Perspectives needs to be a newsletter as such. Facebook, H-Net, blogs, and websites are enough for up-to-date (even up-to-the-minute) news and announcements of funding opportunities, new academic programs, job listings, calls for papers, and so forth. At the other end of the spectrum from fast-breaking to "slow-cooked": AJS Review and a host of other journals deliver excellent peer-reviewed original scholarship in the broad field of Jewish Studies, as well as book reviews and review essays. Ideally, Perspectives finds its niche somewhere in the middle, with articles falling into several (somewhat overlapping) categories:

(1) Reports on new and emerging subfields or scholarly conversations, pointing the interested reader to new resources and new conversation partners. Such reports would combine elements of review essays but need not limit themselves to already published material.

(2) Reports on new academic initiatives and projects. These reports can go beyond press release language toward more in-depth discussion and situate new projects within the broader scholarly landscape.

(3) Digests of new scholarship, especially abstracts of articles appearing in disciplinary journals or journals "outside" of Jewish Studies.

(4) Articles reporting on trends in academia, K-12 Jewish or general education, Jewish adult education, or rabbinical/ professional/communal education that affect (or could affect) the way we do our work as scholars and teachers of Jewish Studies.

(5) Articles reporting on "best practices" in Jewish Studies programs, department management, graduate or undergraduate education, or scholarly praxis.