My scholarly interests in the history of Jewish cultural expression both in the Old World and the New, as well as in the history of material culture, have prompted me to come up with a series of innovative seminars in that subject and, concomitantly, to continue actively in my role as a public intellectual. I should add that this past academic year I taught two brand new courses, one of which--"The Life of Things"--is the first to bring the discipline of material culture and its relationship to the study of the past to the attention of GW's undergrad population.