Notes on Contributors

Walter Barta is a student and researcher at the University of Houston. In order to pay off the cruel practical jokes which are his student loans, he has also started teaching freshmen at Wharton County Junior College, which his mentors assure him is basically the same as being a (bad) stand‐up comedian.

Utku Cansu is a PhD candidate in political philosophy at Princeton University. His dissertation focuses on Nietzsche’s political thought and explores the important and subtle role played by rhetoric and education, especially through the thinker’s dialogue with the ancient thinkers. His other research interests include contemporary populisms, Machiavelli’s writings on the military, and the political challenge posed by decentralized forms of digital ownership. Like Joker, Utku is a fan of Charlie Chaplin and silent cinema.

Massimiliano L. Cappuccio is a senior researcher in the School of Engineering & Technology of the University of New South Wales Canberra. He is a cognitive philosopher and a technology ethicist interested in human performance and autonomous technologies from a 4E cognition perspective. His current research focuses on philosophy of skill and expertise, philosophy and theory of AI, social robotics, human–robot teaming, and the strategic and ethical implications of autonomous technologies. He has previously worked on social cognition (mirror neurons and empathy), choking effect and unreflective action, joint attention, gesture, and foundations of computationalism. When he was a student, he used to have naturally healthy, vigorous, green hair, which completely fell out the first time he attended a conference of formal epistemologists.

Erich Christiansen teaches philosophy at Seattle University and the University of Washington, Bothell. He specializes in existentialism and Continental philosophy in general, especially in regard to political philosophy and ethics. He has contributed chapters to the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series volumes Black Sabbath and Philosophy and Saturday Night Live and Philosophy. He has written about jazz for A Gathering of the Tribes and about jazz and comics for Pulse: Berlin. His poetry has appeared in Bad Newz and Maitenant. He was taught to read with a 1970s reprint of Batman #1.

Roy T. Cook is CLA Scholar of the College and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and also Resident Fellow and Member of the Governing Board of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. He has published over 100 articles and book chapters on logic, the philosophy of mathematics, feminist philosophy, and the aesthetics of popular culture. He’s actually more of a Marvel guy, truth be told—but he retains a special love for the wilder and weirder corners of Batman’s rogues gallery, the Joker included.

Kody W. Cooper is UC Foundation Associate Professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and 2023–2024 Visiting Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of two books and several popular and scholarly articles. He is also known in his household as Dadman, and for his pinpoint accuracy with a Batarang, which strikes enough fear into the hearts of his nine children to keep them on the straight and narrow.

Alba Curry is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Leeds, UK. She earned her PhD at the Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, University of California, Riverside, specializing in the comparative study of early China and Greece. Her previous studies include an MA in Chinese philosophy from Fudan University, Shanghai, and a BA in philosophy from the University of Glasgow. Currently her work defends the positive value of anger in ancient Chinese and Greek ethics, individually and comparatively, and its value to contemporary philosophies of emotions, feminism, and artificial intelligence. She loves the idea that often smiles hide dark origins.

George A. Dunn is a Community Associate Faculty Member at Indiana University‐Indianapolis and a Special Research Fellow with the Institute for the Marxist Study of Religion in New Era at Hangzhou City University in Hangzhou, China. He has published extensively on philosophy and popular culture. His most recent books are A New Politics for Philosophy: Perspectives on Plato, Nietzsche, and Strauss (co‐edited with Mango Telli) and René Girard and the Western Philosophical Tradition (co‐edited with Andreas Wilmes). If you know what’s good for you, you won’t ask him how he got his scars.

Jason T. Eberl is the Hubert Mäder Chair in Health Care Ethics, Professor of Health Care Ethics and Philosophy, and Director of the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University. He teaches and publishes on bioethics, medieval philosophy, and metaphysics. He’s the editor of Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy (Wiley Blackwell, 2008), co‐editor (with Kevin S. Decker) of The Ultimate Star Trek and Philosophy (Wiley Blackwell, 2016), The Ultimate Star Wars and Philosophy (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), and Star Wars and Philosophy Strikes Back (Wiley Blackwell, 2023), as well as the original Star Trek and Philosophy (Open Court, 2008) and Star Wars and Philosophy (Open Court, 2005). He’s also co‐editor (with George A. Dunn) of Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy (Wiley Blackwell, 2013) and The Philosophy of Christopher Nolan (Lexington, 2017). He has a scar on his forehead that is either from falling down stairs as a toddler, being chased by a girl and running into a cement tunnel in 6th grade, or getting involved in a knife fight on the mean streets of St. Louis.

Marco Favaro is Program Manager at the University of Europe for Applied Sciences in Berlin, where he teaches cultural studies. He obtained his PhD in cultural studies and human sciences at the Otto‐Friedrich‐Universität Bamberg in cooperation with the Università degli Studi di Verona. He worked as a lecturer at Bamberg University, presenting a seminar on the “anti‐hero.” Since September 2022 he has collaborated with the online magazine “Lo Spazio Bianco.” Marco shares with Joker a morbid passion for Batman, as shown by many of his publications. He’s the author of La Maschera dell’Antieroe (The mask of the anti‐hero, 2022), which defines the structures of the contemporary superhero genre and its implicit philosophical concepts, and he co‐edited Batman’s Villains and Villainesses, a multidisciplinary anthology on Arkham Asylum´s most famous guests (2023). He’s also the author of numerous articles, such as “Dylan Dog's Nightmares” (in Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books, 2022), “The Horror vs. L’Indagatore dell’Incubo” (Horror and Philosophy, 2023), and “Antiheroes in the Rubble” (International Journal for the Fantastic in Contemporary Media, 2022). Like the Joker, he’s aware that it’s all a joke, a monstrous demented gag, and it he finds it … hilarious! After all, any other response would be crazy!

Jan Forsman is a postdoctoral researcher and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Iowa. His philosophical interests lie in early modern philosophy, especially early modern women philosophers, questions of free will, and skeptical history. But because he is a giant nerd, he writes also on topics such as dinosaurs and comic book characters. He has published some short stories in the horror genre and enjoys a good dance with the devil in the pale moon light.

Ryan Harte is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Utah Valley University. He earned a PhD in comparative literature and philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, and specializes in early Chinese and Greek thought. His current work centers around a critique of the modern, post‐Enlightenment capitalist world by turning to ancient and non‐Western traditions. He shares the Joker’s genuine puzzlement at what passes for “normal” in our society.

Thomas D. Harter is Director of the Department of Bioethics and Humanities with Gundersen Health System. After being trained in philosophy at the University of Tennessee, he went rogue and was drawn to the world of clinical ethics. Like Gothamites dressed as vigilante heroes who fight crime in the dark of night, Harter maintains a dual identity as an academician while battling evil forces as a hero’s sidekick in the order of dark knights. To maintain his secret identity, Harter writes about issues at the intersection of medical ethics, business ethics, medical professionalism, and philosophy, and teaches bioethics courses and lectures on bioethics topics with other health professionals. He is co‐editor of Medical Professionalism: Theory, Education, and Practice (2024). In his spare time, Harter thinks about whether Joker just pays for all his weapons in cash and whether he pays medical, dental, and other benefits to his henchmen?

According to an infamous conspiracy theory, Finland is an imaginary country, plotted by the Soviet Union and Japan. Jarno Hietalahti is precisely from this imaginary wonderland, which happens to be the happiest country in the universe. In his fictional academic life, Hietalahti is a diligently publishing and well‐respected author who plays a...