I've been putting off writing this post for a while — not because I'm disappointed with what I did this year, but because I don't yet know what I will do next year (aside from finishing one major project begun this year), and that has me feeling very uneasy. But more on that to come... let's see what I managed to accomplish this past year (aside from my day job).
BOOKS
I started and finished three books this year: two of them sole-authored and one edited, one of them out now and the others coming in 2018 and 2019. (I also had one edited book come out this year that was finished last year: The Insanity Defense: Multidisciplinary Views on Its History, Trends, and Controversies.)
1. The Decline of the Individual: Reconciling Autonomy with Community, which was written in the spring and then went through a ridiculously rushed production process over the summer, was published by Palgrave in September. (It was scheduled for August publication, if you can believe that. I still can't.) I wrote about this book and the writing process behind it here, and my friend Dante brilliantly described the production process here. (I also constructed the index that there "just wasn't time for": you can find it here.)
2. Doctor Strange and Philosophy: The Other Forbidden Book of Knowledge, an entry in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series that I worked on over the summer, will be out from Wiley-Blackwell in May 2018. My first volume in the series since 2013's Superman and Philosophy, this project was a joy to put together with a couple dozen brilliant contributors and trusty series editor Bill Irwin. (The cover has not yet been posted as I write this, but trust me, it's gorgeous. UPDATE: You can see it here.)
3. A sole-authored book on a superhero and ethics (in the vein of The Virtues of Captain America), which I wrote mostly during the summer and completed in the fall, is under review for classroom adoption potential and is planned to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2019. (Will this particular superhero still be around by then? I sure hope so!) I wrote about this book, the process behind it, and the reason for being so coy about its subject, here.
Currently, I'm in the midst of production for Doctor Strange and Philosophy and editing The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, for which I already have a handful of finalized chapters and which I hope to finish by the middle of next year. Other than that, aside from a few things I've discussed casually with editors at various presses, I have no firm plans for the books in the future, and that is a strange feeling. (But more on that later.)
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS
As I've said for the last several years, I'm shifting my work away from short pieces and toward books, and this year reflects that. Although a decent number of articles and chapters written last year (or earlier) came out this year, I only wrote two book chapters this year (and have just two to write next year).
Published this year but written earlier (although the first two were revised this year) are:
"Dignity on the Line: The Kantian Ethics and Economics of Work,” in Fair Work: Ethics, Social Policy, Globalization, edited by Kory Schaff (Rowman & Littlefield International), pp. 19-40. (This book is also the first in my On Ethics and Economics series.)
- “Preferences All the Way Down: Questioning the Neoclassical Foundations of Behavioral Economics and Libertarian Paternalism,” Oeconomia, 7(3), pp. 353-373.
- “Judging the Efficacy and Ethics of Positive Psychology for Government Policymaking,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Positive Psychology, edited by Tim Lomas, Nick Brown, and Francisco Jose Eiroá-Orosa (Routledge), pp. 532-545.
- “‘What I Had to Do’: The Ethics of Wonder Woman’s Execution of Maxwell Lord,” in Wonder Woman and Philosophy: The Amazonian Mystique, edited by Jacob M. Held (Wiley Blackwell), pp. 104-114.
- “Nudging Debt: On the Ethics of Behavioral Paternalism in Personal Finance,” in Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 28(2), pp. 225-234.
Accepted this year and forthcoming — the first written last year, the second this year — are:
- “Nudging – Ethical and Political Dimensions of Choice Architectures,” forthcoming in Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy, edited by Holger Strassheim and Silke Beck (Edward Elgar).
- "The Otherworldly Burden of Being the Sorcerer Supreme," forthcoming in Doctor Strange and Philosophy.
Finally, in progress are chapters for two edited books, one on Spider-Man and his villains and another on ethics and economics, and next spring I will write my chapter and the introduction for the handbook. (After that... who knows?)
ONLINE WORK
I included this category even though there is very little to account for, other than a few posts at Psychology Today and The Comics Professor. I always hope to blog more — and still do — but rarely find I have anything to say. (That may soon be changing, though... see more below.)
PRESENTATIONS/LECTURES
Not much to report here either: I only gave two presentations in 2017, both at the Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association in March. I have no travel planned for next year; I think I'm skipping next week's ASSA meetings for the first time since I began going to 1996, and I already turned down one conference invitation for 2018.
LOOKING FORWARD
I really can't improve on what I wrote last year: "Little has changed since I invoked Tolstoy five years ago at The Good Men Project. I'm still not sure what I'm doing, what I 'should' be doing, or what I want to be doing."
When I told one of my best friends recently that I have nothing planned to do after the handbook is finished next year, he told me, "do what you really want to do." But he knows full well that that's my problem: I still haven't figured out what I want to do. (Pacing around my apartment isn't one of them, but here I am!) I keep a list of things I could do — various topics I could write on, as well as book projects I've discussed with editors at different presses — but none of them excites me at the moment. And then there's that novel I've been telling myself I'd write when I get done with other things, but that's such a huge shift in focus... I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. (But maybe soon.)
There may be a light in the distance. however. In my last update, I wrote this (originally from my "comeback" post at The Comics Professor, a comeback that lasted all of two posts so far), partly in response to my declining interest in the current state of superhero comics and also looking towards my future activities:
I've been thinking a lot lately about diving back into the past comics I love, whether Captain America, Batman, the Fantastic Four, or others, and blogging in a more systematic way about them, taking each issue or storyline and writing about what I love about it, whether there's something of philosophical interest there or not. Maybe I'll just geek out about how cool the art is, or how a moment made me laugh or cry. Maybe I'll even do a podcast about them, something like The Fantasticast or the Nerdsync podcast—not that I can do that any better than Stephen and Andrew or Scott do, but I'd do it my own way, whatever they may be. Just an idea I've been knocking around, something to get excited about.
Since the time I wrote that, I received two very gratifying and humbling messages, one from a college professor and the other from an instructor in the United States Army, both of whom have used my Captain America book in their classes. This news affected me deeply — especially the one from the army — and confirmed my thoughts about focusing more on comics in general and Captain America in particular, including developing some online content to reinforce and supplement the book, as well as extending the approach to other heroes (such as I did with the book I wrote this summer). So this is likely what I'll be doing next year (aside from the handbook), though it still feels too amorphous at this point to seem "real."
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In general, I realize I don't need to plan the entire next year and have projects nailed down, and that ideas will come to me eventually, but this is the first time in years that I don't have several projects stacked up going into the new year. And I think that's why I look back on 2017 and worry that my 2018 won't be as productive. (There's also the question of why my productivity matters so much to me, but let's ignore that elephant in the room.) Instead of being pleased with what I accomplished this past year, I'm afraid that it's my last "good" year, that I'm "done." And when work is all there is... well, you can fill in the rest. (This also answers that question above.)
Finally, to address my best-laid plans about keeping a routine as laid out in last year's wrap-up post... well, I didn't, at least not in the sense of keeping to a certain schedule or routine. I did, however, work on my two books most every day while writing each of them, so regularity, more than routine, seems to be key for me. I also kept a book journal for the summer book (but not the spring one, for some reason), and this helped reinforce my progress and keep me on track. (No Steinbeck-style ennui this time, amazingly.) I suspect this may be why I need to be working on a "big project," something I can work on every day — it seems that's how I work best and am most satisfied with what I do.
We'll see what happens... and in the meantime, I wish you a fulfilling 2018, whatever that may mean for you!
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