I’m involved to some extent in organizing a number of conferences whose CFP are open right now:

• Paul K. Feyerabend: A Centennial Celebration, the 12th Annual Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology Conference at the Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology at UT Dallas (May 23-25, 2024). This conference focuses on the legacy of Feyerabend for contemporary history and philosophy of science, science & technology studies, science policy, and other relevant areas. 300-500 word abstract, Deadline: January 18, 2024.
• John Dewey, Race, and Colonialism Workshop at the Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University (October 17-19, 2024). This workshop will bring together scholars working on the history of Dewey’s work on this subject in relation his contemporaries with scholars using Dewey as a resource for work on race, colonialism, and cultural pluralism. 5,000-6,000 word paper, Deadline: May 17, 2024.
• Popular Arts Conference in Atlanta, in concert with DragonCon (August 30 – Sept 2, 2024). This conference brings multidisciplinary scholarship in pop culture studies to a broad audience associated with the convention. Technically, the deadline has passed, but we are still accepting submissions at the moment, and anything submitted before the submission portal closes will be considered. ≤500 word abstracts for individual submissions, see instructions for group submissions.

Although I’m not involved this year, submissions are also open for the Philosophy of Science Association biennial meeting in New Orleans (November 14-17, 2024).

• Symposium Proposals, abstracts for panel and individual presentations (see instructions), Deadline: January 15, 2024.
• Contributed Papers, ≤4,500 word papers, Deadline: March 15, 2024

Nick Zautra interviewed me for the Sci Phi Podcast in summer 2019, but I never got around to posting the interview. You can find it here. Enjoy!

From late 2020 through mid-2021 I worked with a diverse group of experts on a report for UNESCO on science and scientific researchers in the United States. This work was facilitated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). As a bit of background, in 2017 UNESCO adopted a set of recommendations, “the Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers,” which supersedes a similar recommendation going back to 1974. The new recommendation has 10 key areas; according to the summary,

1. “underlines the responsibility of science towards the United Nations’ ideals of human dignity,
   progress, justice, peace, welfare of humankind and respect for the environment;
2. emphasizes the need for science to meaningfully interact with society and vice versa;
3. recognizes the role of science in national policy and decision-making, international
   cooperation and development;
4. promotes science as a common good;
5. calls for inclusive and non-discriminatory work conditions and access to education and
   employment in science;
6. emphasizes that any scientific conduct is subject to universal human rights standards;
7. balances the freedoms, rights and responsibilities of researchers;
8. calls for scientific integrity and ethical codes of conduct for science and research and their
   technical applications;
9. recognizes the vital importance of human capital for a sound and responsible science system;
   and
10. stresses the role of Member States in creating an enabling environment for science and
    research.”

Now, as you may be aware, the United States stopped paying dues to UNESCO in 2011 under Obama, and withdrew completely in 2019 under Trump. So the US government did not produce the report required by the 2017 recommendation. Instead, AAAS took it upon itself to produce this sort of report. That report has now been published:

Wyndham, J., Weisenberg, N., McCarty, C., Goldman, G., Brown, M., and Borenstein, J. 2022.
UNESCO Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers and the United States: An
Analysis of Key Themes. https://doi.org/10.1126/aaas.ade8203

An author-meets-critics symposium has been published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. This is a published version of the symposium that took place at the Doing Science in a Pluralistic Society conference at the University of Dayton. See more…

My new book has been published in hardcover and in a free, open access digital edition. Find out more on the dedicated website for the book.

More Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods, edited by Randy Duncan, Matthew J. Smith, and I, has just been published by Routledge. You can also find it at Amazon.

The book is a followup to the original Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods (edited by Matt and Randy), with 19 chapters covering all-new critical approaches, filling in a few lacunae from the first book as well as representing the growth in relevant approaches in comics studies over the past ~8 years.

As with the first book, each chapter is written with the student in mind, laying out background, underlying assumptions, and procedures for the relevant critical approach, an explanation of what sort of works / artifacts are appropriate for that type of approach, and a sample analysis of a specific work. 

The book is useful not only for teaching comics studies courses, but can also be used to teach theories and methods in arts and humanities more generally. 

List of approaches and contributors is below.

• Critical Theory, Matthew P. McAllister & Joe Cruz
• Postcolonial Theory, Christophe Dony
• Critical Race Theory, Phillip Lamarr Cunningham
• Queer Theory, Valentino L. Zullo
• Disability Studies, Krista Quesenberry
• Critical Geography, Julian C. Chambliss
• Utopianism, Graham J. Murphy
• New Criticism, Rocco Versaci
• Psychoanalytic Criticism, Evita Lykou
• Autographics, Andy J. Kunka
• Linguistics, Kristy Beers Fägersten
• Philosophical Aesthetics, Aaron Meskin & Roy T. Cook
• Burkean Dramatistic Analysis, A. Cheree Carlson
• Adaptation, David Coughlan
• Transmedia Storytelling, William Proctor
• Parasocial Relationship Analysis, Randy Duncan
• Historiography, Adam Sherif
• Bakhtinian Dialogics, Daniel Pinti
• Scientific Humanities, Matthew J. Brown

A few years ago I wrote about work in progress on science, values, and climate change with my good friend, fellow UCSD alum, and brilliant philosopher of biology Joyce C. Havstad. I’ve excited to say that the fruits of our labors are finally seeing publication, with one article just out at the beginning of the year in Perspectives on Science and two more forthcoming later this year in a book on inductive risk and a special issue of PAQ, both edited by Kevin Elliott and Ted Richards. Full references and preprint links below.

• (with Joyce C. Havstad). “The Disconnect Problem, Scientific Authority, and Climate Policy.” (2017) Perspectives on Science 25(1):67-94. [journal]
• (with Joyce C. Havstad). “Inductive Risk, Deferred Decisions, and Climate Science Advising,” in Kevin C. Elliott and Ted Richards (eds), Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science, Oxford University Press.
• (with Joyce C. Havstad). “Neutrality, Relevance, Prescription, and the IPCC,” Public Affairs Quarterly, special issue on The Responsible Use of Science in Societal Decision Making (Part 2, October 2017), eds. Kevin C. Elliott and Ted Richards

Great Hera! My article “Love Slaves and Wonder Women: Radical Feminism and Social Reform in the Psychology of William Moulton Marston” was published in the latest issue of the new, open-access journal Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. Thanks to the libraries at University of Western Ontario, the article is freely available to all comers (as all products of publicly-funded scholarship ought to be).

This paper has been a labor of love for about 8 years, when I encountered Molly Rhodes’ article on Marston and Wonder Woman (“Wonder Woman and Her Disciplinary Powers: The Queer Intersection of Scientific Authority and Mass Culture,” published in Reid & Traweek’s Doing Science + Culture) while sitting in on Roddey Reid’s course on cultural studies of science in the UCSD Lit department (it is an unfortunate thing that more philosophers of science don’t engage with cultural studies of science — see Rouse).

I did a lot of the basic research in 2009-2011, and have spent a lot of time refining my interpretation and my argument. In a way, I wish I had published it before the explosion of work around 2014-2015 on Marston (most notably Jill Lepore’s book). But if I had, (a) I wouldn’t have been able to publish it in this wonderful journal, and (b) for all her book’s flaws, I wouldn’t have been able to benefit from Lepore’s incredibly rich archival research. In many ways the paper would not have been as good in 2011 or 2013 as it is today.

I do my thank yous in the acknowledgements section of the paper, but I want to reiterate my thanks to Sabrina Starnaman, who helped me refine this work over the years, and who brought me into Reid’s class in the first place. I think she even came up with the title for the paper! And also, thanks to the many audiences who listened to this talk over the years as I worked these ideas out.

My latest article, John Dewey’s pragmatist alternative to the belief-acceptance dichotomy is avaiable for free with this link until November 8th. If you want to learn about Dewey’s logic, his theory of propositions, his theory of truth, and values in science, you should download this piece!

I’m very pleased that you can now find “John Dewey’s Pragmatist Alternative to the Belief-Acceptance Dichotomy” in the online “Articles in press” section at Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A. It’s part of a special issue by Kevin Elliott and Dan McKaughan on Cognitive Attitudes and Values in Science, based on a great workshop organized by Kevin and Don Howard in 2013. You can also find a copy on my Academia.edu page.

I’m glad this is in print, because in many ways it is something of a sequel to my “Values in Science beyond Underdetermination and Inductive Risk” paper in Philosophy of Science, in that (1) identifies an additional common tactic for opponents of the value-ladenness of science, the wedge strategy, and (2) it pushes further in the direction of offering a positive alternative to accounts of values in science that avoids the two problems I identified in the earlier paper (the problem of wishful thinking and the lexical priority of evidence over values).

“But wait!” I bet you’re thinking. This is a long paper full of Dewey exegesis, not a first-order argument in philosophy of science like your “Values in Science…” paper. (In this way, it’s also a sequel to my HOPOS paper, “John Dewey’s Logic of Science.”) Well, this is the particular vice of my philosophical thinking—at some point in my thinking on a topic, I tend to spiral through Dewey interpretation, at least for a while. Next comes a paper with less Dewey and more argument (hopefully).

Many thanks to Kevin, Dan, Don, and everyone who provided feedback on the paper!