The AJS seeks volunteers to serve on a number of its committees and in other capacities. The AJS cannot function without the time and service of members who help to make the programs of the AJS possible. New committee will be chosen by a selection committee made up of the Committee Chair, the Executive Director, the AJS President, and the Board Liaison to that Committee.
Please understand that our committees have a limited number of members. We may be unable to place all volunteers on the committee of their choice. We will continue to regularly call for volunteers and will make more opportunities to join in our collective work.
Unless otherwise noted, all committee members serve for two-year terms and can serve no more than two consecutive terms for a total of four years. No AJS member can occupy more than two AJS leadership or volunteer positions at any one time. Below, please fi nd brief descriptions of committees looking for volunteers. If you would like to let chairs know that you might be interested in joining, please fill out this Google form, and submit it by February 21, 2025 at 5:00 pm EST.Contingent Faculty Committee (Chair, Rachel Greenblatt): This committee discusses the challenges facing scholars who are adjunct faculty, post-docs, language instructors, and other non-tenured or tenure track members of the academic community. We have identifi ed some major issues and are working to advocate for better conditions and more respect and representation for this group. This year, we aim to discuss the possibility of broadening this mandate to include the diverse breadth of careers in Jewish Studies. Committee members should excel in patience, as change is slow and the impact of hours of devoted work may not be immediately apparent to the naked eye.
Film Committee (Chair, Jim Bunton): This committee works to select the fi lms and programming for the AJS fi lm festival which occurs every year at the AJS annual conference.
Membership Committee (Chair, Hartley Lachter, VP of Membership): This new committee will work with the AJS's VP of Membership and AJS staff to identify and engage various demographics both currently served and also not currently served by the AJS in order to improve the AJS's relevance and impact for Jewish Studies scholars.
Public Engagement Committee (Chair, TBD) : The new committee speaks to the part of the AJS's mission that aims "to foster greater understanding of Jewish Studies with the wider public." This committee will think through new ways of engaging and serving the public and how the work of AJS members can be better shared with a wide audience.
AJS Perspectives Editorial Board Members (Editors: Laura Limonic and Federica Schoeman): Members of the editorial board shape the vision of the magazine, actively solicit articles, and represent the magazine at conferences and other forums. Other responsibilities for the editorial board include publicizing biannual calls for submissions to AJS Perspectives , adjudicating a handful of 250-word pitches in and around one’s subfi eld, and doing a fi rst-pass read on no more than one 1000-word essay per issue in or around one’s subfi eld. Meetings are held one time per year at the Annual Meeting. We would very much like the new editorial board members’ subfi elds to complement those of the existing editorial board members . Members serve for three years.
AJS Review Editorial Board Members The AJS Review is seeking to expand its Editorial Board in specific areas. We are looking especially for scholars with expertise on Jews and Judaism during the medieval and early modern periods, Hasidism, and the modern Middle East. In addition, we are seeking scholars eager to review articles in Hebrew. Members of the Editorial Board serve a three-year term and shape the vision of the journal, actively solicit articles, and represent the journal at conferences and other forums. Members of the Editorial Board are expected to review 2-3 articles per year (which may include articles in both Hebrew and English), provide recommendations for reviewers of articles, and attend the annual meeting of the Editorial Board.
AJS Perspectives Co-editors
AJS Perspectives, the leading forum for exploring methodological and pedagogical issues in Jewish Studies, invites proposals for new coeditors for a three-year term beginning April 2025. The new editors will serve as associate editors for the first issue of their term, during which time they will shadow the current editors and ensure a smooth transition. The new co-editors will then serve as co-editors for the subsequent five issues (mentoring the new team of co-editors for the last issue of their own term). Karin Kugel will continue to serve as Managing Editor of AJS Perspectives.
Overseeing AJS Perspectives affords the co-editors an opportunity to explore everything that makes Jewish Studies rich, innovative, and exciting. Each issue contains approximately a dozen essays organized around a specific theme; this theme is selected in order to engage scholarly yet accessible reflecting from a diversity of vantage points, in a medium specifically enriched by visual images. Recent themes have included "The Conversion Issue" and "The AI Issue," and a perusal of the archive shows just how creative editors can be. Issue themes provide a way to help define what Jewish Studies is (or can be) even as they bring together, coherently, a diversity of fields, time periods, approaches, topics, and scholars.
We seek an editorial team that is interested in fostering the traditions of AJS Perspectives while also bringing to it new and innovative ideas. Editors, who must be AJS members, work with an editorial board that reflects the breadth and diversity of the AJS to develop issue themes, and to ensure that every CFP is widely and well distributed; the new co-editors will be able to help shape their editorial board. Like those who write for AJS Perspectives, co-editors should be interested in and committed to the translation of Jewish Studies into the public square, and they should value the magazine’s missing of reflecting the breadth of what Jewish Studies is and can be.
Co-editors should work well together, and be comfortable working as part of a team, as they will be partners with the production team (giving feedback on copy editing and layout) and liaise with the editorial board and any associate editors, as needed. The position of co-editor of AJS Perspectives falls under the general category of service to the profession and is an unpaid position.
