I don't know whether I'm lying to myself when I say that I don't have much interest in writing about or studying Judaism and Jewish Americans or whether I just tend to fall back on them like a crutch. Do I write about Jews because it seems like it should be easier? Do I write about Jews because I KEEP writing about Jews, so every time I do it, it gets a little easier?
I'm also writing about cultural minstrelsy - which, to be honest, I wrote some about last semester, but far more about THIS semester. Maybe that's the real answer - I only have two or three moderately original ideas every year or two. I take those ideas and continually build upon them - making mutant super-papers which gain lives of their own and force me to reproduce them in new and grotesque ways without realizing it until it's too late!
I hope my mutant super paper looks kind of like a radioactive cephalopod. I hope it slithers through the library in a few moments, gives me a knowing wink, and then devours an unsuspecting student or two on its path of everlasting destruction. Don't worry - it won't be a REAL student, just an expendable extra who would much rather be here than at his real job, waiting tables.