As part of the annual conference of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions in Athens last June, I gave a presentation that became a paper called “Can Emotions Have Abstract Objects? The Example of Awe.”

Now that paper has been published in the journal Philosophia, and is available for free to anyone via the link above (which takes you to a full text, read-only version). I welcome any questions or comments you may have about it!

I became a fan of Grey’s Anatomy when I spent six weeks in Argentina – reruns were on television just about every moment of every day, so whenever I got lonely, or missed Seattle, or wanted to hear some English, it was there for me. Since then, I’ve often imagined a show that, instead of following medical students through surgical internships and residencies and beyond, would follow graduate students getting their PhDs in the humanities. If you’ve been through it, you know that there is a lot of dramatic potential there (and if any tv execs are out there and want to hear a more detailed pitch – I’m ready)! Plus, who doesn’t enjoy seeing lives like their own represented in mass media, so long as it isn’t as the butt of a joke or a mere token or an offensively simplified caricature or something?

Well, part of my wish has been fulfilled. This fall, NBC is airing a new show called The Good Place; the title refers to a place kind of like heaven, which is where it takes place, and one of the main characters (Chidi) is a moral philosopher! I never thought I would see a major network television show where a character holds up a copy of Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other and starts giving a brief introduction to contractualism, or where the lead character reads some Kant and Aristotle and starts using what she’s learned in her life outside the classroom!

Is it a perfect portrayal of the life of an ethicist? Of course not – it does play up certain stereotypes (though it violates others), and we could easily get nit-picky about the content of Chidi’s lectures if we wanted to (it isn’t like there is no critical thinking to be done about any given product of mass media). Nevertheless, for now, I’m pretty stoked about the fact that lots of different people might be getting their first exposure to the possibility of real people earning a living by thinking about morality, and the idea that maybe we do make valuable contributions to society sometimes.

I’m grateful to share the good news that I have received a New Faculty Start Up Grant from the ASPiRE Program at Ball State University. Specifically, this $3,000 grant will enable me to travel to a couple of additional conferences in the coming year and buy some books to help me advance my research on collective moral responsibility.

The experience of writing my grant proposal was really valuable, in that it helped me reflect on my current research and do some long-term planning. Even more importantly, the success of the proposal means I’ll get additional institutional support as I move forward with my work. So thank you very much, Sponsored Projects Administration and ASPiRE Program, for helping me prepare my grant and for accepting my proposal!

At the end of this month, I will be presenting and seeing new research at the Hypatia conference at Villanova University in Philadelphia. If you look at the website for the conference, “Exploring Collaborative Contestations and Diversifying Philosophy,” you’ll see that there is a lot to look forward to! In the meantime, I’ll be working hard on my paper (about the concept of a daughter).

Tomorrow I’m going to be sharing some of my work at WOGAP, the workshop on gender and philosophy that is hosted at MIT. The topic of my paper, moral responsibility and its relation to one’s conceptual repertoire, is one that I have found very interesting and challenging over the past year and change, so I’m eagerly looking forward to the discussion.

I am also grateful for the opportunity to share my work with folks whose company and insights I have so enjoyed during all the other WOGAP sessions I’ve attended these past two years, and for the chance to thank them for the good times in person before I move away this summer.