Sarah Donovan

Have you ever adopted the persona of someone like the Socratic gadfly in the midst of class to provoke discussion? Or maybe a high-energy performer to hold student interest? Many educators sense that part of success in teaching is dependent on how they show up to interact with students or the persona they adopt in the classroom. Yet, scholars have not adequately considered the role of pedagogical personas as an element of instructional design, and how personas can help or hinder their students’ ability to meet the course’s learning goals. We argue that personas play a critical role in instructional design: they help faculty deliver course content, run a class activity, and give structure to the professor-student relationship. Further, in the same way we encourage students to have a growth mindset in the classroom, faculty should adopt a growth mindset with regard to their personas. Finally, faculty can benefit from workshopping their personas with colleagues in the same way that they would an assignment, and we give some tips and strategies for how to do so.

In Aaron and Bachalo's work, Doctor Stephen Strange exemplifies the characteristics and methods of the natural philosophers in clashes with his mystical enemies, Lord Imperator and the Empirikul. It's easy to be distracted by Doctor Strange's fancy spells, unique job title, or flashy cape, but we should also recognize that he is a Sorcerer Supreme, who demonstrates both discipline and intellect. Like the historical philosopher‐scientists, Doctor Strange studies metaphysics and its relationship to the physical world. When intellectuals began to challenge Aristotle's teleological world‐view, they faced opposition from both the Catholic Church, who found Aristotle's views consistent with scripture, and the scientific community. Historian Peter Dear's book Revolutionizing the Sciences helps situate the work of ancient philosophers, like Aristotle, in the context of the history of the scientific revolution.

With attractive and scantily clad female characters, Zeus as a philandering womanizer, the First Born as a hyper‐masculine war monger, and Hera as a jealous wife blaming other women for her husband's infidelities, Wonder Woman (the New 52 series) confirms some age old stereotypes about men and women. But, Wonder Woman (the New 52) also challenges some traditional gender stereotypes. The end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty‐first century have witnessed great strides in gender equality for, among others, heterosexual women and members of the LGBTQ community. In one of the most important early books in twentieth‐century feminist philosophy, The Second Sex, philosopher and novelist Simone de Beauvoir explores women's inequality to men. The chapter considers the transformation of Hera throughout Wonder Woman (the New 52) as an existential movement from immanence to transcendence.

In season one of True Detective, people watch Rustin Cohle evolve from a man who is slowly suffocating under the weight of the world to one who can shoulder it. His metamorphosis is existential. By the end of the season, when he proclaims that the "light is winning", Cohle has arrived. Cohle has had enough of his life; he is trapped in his despair and choking on its poison. Throughout the first season of True Detective, Cohle is the shepherd who is choking on all that is bitter and ugly in the world. He is struggling to find the strength to kill the snake. The snake represents the necessity of affirming all aspects of life and willing them eternally. This leads us to Errol Childress. He is the hyperbolic monster at the end of the dream; he is the specter of nihilism and suffering. Their encounter ends with a violent, crippling battle and Childress' death.

Lex Luthor despises Superman. He obsesses about Superman. He tries to kill Superman. Luthor takes existentialism to the extreme, though, rejecting ethics and becoming an anti‐hero. In Superman: Secret Origin, Luthor is presented as self‐directed from an early age. Friedrich Nietzsche can help us understand Luthor as an iconoclast, literally one who breaks sacred images. Luthor also explains why he is so obsessed with bringing down Superman. Luthor thinks that Superman interferes with people viewing their lives as an existential project. Lex Luthor underscores the complexities of existentialist philosophy. While he is creative, self‐determined, and autonomous, he is also completely immoral. His willingness to sacrifice anything or anyone takes existentialism to an extreme that Nietzsche, Sartre, and Kierkegaard would reject. And so, we are left to wonder: is Lex Luthor an evil genius and an abomination to existentialism, or might he be a true evolution of what existentialism can become.

Colleges and universities cannot ignore the increasingly diverse student population in their classrooms, and how a focus on equity, diversity, and inclusion across disciplines trains students in the intercultural awareness they will need in competitive job markets. Yet while faculty may be aware of a need to understand EDI goals in relationship to their disciplines, and institutions may support EDI in theory, the onus of pedagogical training in EDI often falls on individual faculty. This book was written by faculty and administrators for educators who value the goals of EDI, and seek an intellectual community to help them develop their practice. Important to this book is an honest discussion of common challenges faculty may face when they engage in this difficult work, and effective strategies for addressing those challenges. The chapters are grouped according to six different themes: respect for divergent learning styles; inclusion and exclusion; technology and social action; affective considerations; reflection for critical consciousness; and safe spaces and resistance.

Community-based learning is one way to bring discussions about diversity and inclusion into the philosophy classroom, but it can have unintended, negative consequences if it is not carefully planned. This article is divided into four sections that utilize courses and projects in which I have participated, as both co-architect and instructor, to discuss potential negative outcomes and how to avoid them. The first section introduces the projects and courses. The second section discusses practices that nurture positive relationships between institutions of higher education and communities, and pedagogical strategies to prevent reinforcing negative student perceptions about vulnerable communities. The third section discusses how curricular and pedagogical choices can challenge privilege and power both in the classroom and community experience. The final section focuses on what to do when a student resists the learning experience. I conclude with a brief reflection about the community side of this partnership.

In this article I describe my experience teaching a moral problems course to first-year students within a Learning Community model. I begin with the learning goals and the mechanics of both my Learning Community and my moral problems course. I then focus on the experiential learning requirement of my Learning Community which is based on a field trip model instead of a service learning model. I describe how two field trips in particular—one to an Arab American community in Brooklyn, New York, and the other to a Black American community in West Harlem, New York—primed my students to more effectively engage in philosophical discussions about terrorism, war, and affirmative action. I conclude that experiential learning on a field trip model helped my students to have more sophisticated conversations about complex and emotionally charged moral issues.