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So, if we were talking about "this is the Year of the Dog", I think the
correct rendering of that in Japanese would be 戌年, with the reading いぬどし. But
does that extend outside of the astrological sense?

For example, if TIME magazine declared that "this was the Year of the Selfie",
would that seem naturally phrased as シェルフィ年? Would it be better to render it
as シェルフィの年? Is there some third, more idiomatic way, to phrase the sentiment
"the year when X was prominent"?
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idioms time
"Year of the X" - is there an idiom?
The idiomatic way of saying "This was the year of ～" is "今年は～ **の** 年だった".
Dropping "の" sounds very weird.

And if this _Selfie_ refers to a self-portrait,
[セルフィー](http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/254/254590/) is more natural.

> 年末を迎えてメディアが指摘しているのが、2013年が "The Year of The Selfie"、すなわち セルフィーの年だったということ。
> (<http://www.cubeny.com/catch12-3-13.htm>)
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There is no idiomatic way other than saying 「 **～の[年]{とし}** 」.

The 「～[年]{どし}」 pattern basically only applies to [the 12 zodiac
years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthly_Branches#The_twelve_branches).
There are however a handful of non-zodiac words you can find in a dictionary,
including [[厄年]{やくどし}](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakudoshi),
[当]{あ}たり[年]{どし} ("year of plenty") or [閏年]{うるうどし} ("leap year"), but any of
them is associated with or based on some periodic yearly events and unlikely
you can coin a new one.

As in naruto's answer, _selfie_ should be transcribed into セルフィー. Wikibooks
has a detailed guide to [transcribing English to
Japanese](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Transcribing_English_to_Japanese).
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