December, 2021 Research Update

Amici! Happy New Year!  It is now 2022!

December was frankly less productive than I had hoped.  The early part of the month was eaten up by the normal end of semester rush to grade final exams and so on, which stretched longer into the month than normal because both of my finals were scheduled fairly late in the final exam period.  It's always a bit funny when students - for whom the whole college thing is new of course - assume that professors can reschedule finals (we can't, not even a little bit) and I tell them that if we could, they'd all take all of their finals in a single, unbroken nine hour block on the very first day and we'd all be sipping pinot noir on December 3rd or so.

After that, I ended up taking rather a bit more time off than I had intended, so I don't have much to show in terms of new output, except that an article I was interviewed for on war elephants appeared on 9News in Australia (https://www.9news.com.au/world/war-elephants-ruled-until-roman-army-tactic-ended-reign-of-terror/3b1cbb72-5fb7-4b72-b0ab-821747bd0f31).  I should also note the job talk I alluded to last month happened; I think it went well but of course I am sure the other candidates also offered strong talks.  I expect to hear back sometime in January.  In the meantime, I am already finalizing syllabi for the start of this coming semester's classes; I am teaching Global History of Warfare and History of Rome, so it should be fun!

However, thanks to you guys no matter what the vagaries of the academic job market brings, I have a secure path to keep doing this job that I love and so I wanted to thank you here at the end of the year and take this opportunity to look back at 2021.

Research-wise, we kept to the target of completing at least primary writing on one major piece of writing this year (that was the food logistics chapter; I am as you read this working on editors revisions to that), along with continuing to try to shepherd last year's project (the Roman mail armor article) through peer review.  I'm quite confident that both projects will see the light of day before the end, though that will take time.  I also presented one conference paper at the Society for Military History, gave one invited talk at the Yale Veteran's Association (the latter via zoom) and wrote a book review for the Journal of Military History which should be in the first fascicle of the new year.

In public-facing work, I wrote and got pushed five essays in traditional media publications, three in Foreign Policy, and one each in The National Interest and The Bulwark.  I also did an astounding (to me at least) ten podcasts.

On ACOUP itself, 2021 saw 53 posts published, 32 Collections, 10 Firesides, 2 Miscellanea, 2 Referenda, 2 Guest Posts, and 5 gap weeks.

In terms of readership, 2021 was an even busier year on ACOUP than 2020; 2.79m page-views for the year (compared to 1.9m last year; both figures are as WordPress counts, Google Analytics figures are generally about 10-15% lower, but I don't have Analytics numbers for all of 2020 so this is better for an apples-to-apples comparison).  Likewise the Patreon continues to grow, despite all of my expectations.  At the beginning of 2021 there were 522 of you; here at the end of 2021 there are 854!  The support here has grown every single month.  I am truly flabbergasted by it - thank you all as it lets me continue my work with confidence that whatever the job market or the next stage of this seemingly endless pandemic brings, I can keep doing my thing and still pay the rent and feed the cats.

Speaking of which, January will mark the one year anniversary of the AcademiCats.  Percy is, as I write this, on my lap, 'helping.'  Meanwhile, here is Ollie, who was helping my better half pack up our Christmas decorations:

Overall I know that, like 2020, 2021 was a difficult year for many people.  I certainly have a number of colleagues who really struggled in 2021 with a lot of things.  But I have to say that 2021 felt like a good year for me.  Things got written, I got back to teaching in person again, people read the things I wrote and the cats were an endless spot of joy (and occasional frustration).  My efforts to bring history to the public continue to surprise me with how well they have been received.

Thank you all for sharing 2021 with me.  Now let's look forward to 2022!  I've already started drafting "How Bad Was the Fall of the Roman Empire" - the winner of our ACOUP Senate poll by some margin.  I'm hoping also this year to do a How Did They Make It on leather production and to cap that off with a discussion of how leather was actually used in armor and to finally get around to doing that Doctrine post I keep promising.  I am also at least working my way through Netflix' The Witcher, so perhaps some commentary on that (the battle and siege scenes in the first episode were...ouch.  Good show, solid actors, good dialogue but oof the battle scenes and some of the armor).

Onward!