Editor’s introduction Dianne Ashton Five years ago, I began my work as editor of this journal, a responsibility I was honored to assume. Over the course of those years, I watched many articles develop from rough drafts into fine contributions to our field. I am grateful to each person who generously shared his or her time and expertise to review submissions when I contacted them. That generosity, drawn from a commitment to maintaining a high standard of intellectual excellence in our field, has kept this journal at the forefront of American Jewish history. Our review process gives our journal the authority of its title. It has been an exciting and creative half decade. I was pleased to introduce a new feature that highlights an item from the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society, our parent. Titled “From the Archives,” the feature brings scholars together to comment upon how they would use an item in the rich AJHS archives. This feature often appears in a special issue dedicated to a particular theme, where it deepens the scholarly discussion by providing a look into how historians think about their work. Several scholars also helped to develop a second new feature, “Sign-posts,” which uses the journal itself as archival data. Because our journal began publication in 1892, it is a record of the field’s development. The work that appeared under this new feature’s banner explored key turns in historians’ interests, methods, and analyses as they appeared in American Jewish History (and in its former incarnation, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society). I was pleased to work with a handful of key scholars to develop themed issues, some of which will appear in 2017 and 2018. These special projects enabled us to showcase subfields, either regarding a topic (such as the American Civil War), or regarding a method (such as literary studies, as this current issue, guest edited by University of Massachusetts professor Josh Lambert, demonstrates. The handful of men who organized the AJHS and our journal no doubt would be amazed to see the sophistication, complexity, and professional scholarship that the field of American Jewish history has attained. Our special themed issues showcase recent areas of the field’s intellectual growth. The current issue of AJH brings my term as editor to a close. Associate Editor Michael Alexander, who has graciously performed a wide range of duties to keep this journal humming, steps down with me. We are confident that the new leadership will bring the journal to new heights of excellence that will keep it at the forefront of the study of American Jewish history. We wish them great success. [End Page ix] Dianne Ashton Rowan University Copyright © 2016 American Jewish Historical Society