Mark D. White

Summer workin', did some at last... (A personal update)

I'm writing this on a Monday, and the fall semester begins on Thursday, so I'm sure I'll get all my writing goals for the summer done by then.

Ha.

I wanted to check in before school starts, although I don't have much specific to report. Nothing was finished this summer, though progress was made on several projects—not the least of them being scheduling them out. As it happens, the commitments I've made are exceptionally well spaced out in time through the end of 2024, thanks to some patient editors, and it should leave time to do smaller things as they arise. ("Should," he writes with trembling fingers.)

Besides this, there have been several new developments since I last reported:

• The chapter I completed before summer began, "Punishment and Resources," was accepted, and will be published in The Oxford Handbook of Punishment Theory and Philosophy, edited by Jesper Ryberg.
• I published three posts based on my Thor book at Psychology Today: "What Makes Thor Worthy?", "Who Should Decide What Worth Means—and If You're Worthy?", and "How Do You Reclaim Your Sense of Worth After Losing It?"
• I'll be giving my first guest lecture since 2018 in late September, at York College (in Pennsylvania), where I last visited in 2015, on the subject of Batman and ethics. (That's assuming I'm finished with jury duty obligations that start in the middle of September!)
• Finally, my biggest news is that I have agreed to prepare a revised and updated second edition of The Virtues of Captain America in anticipation of the new movie in 2024 (and the tenth anniversary of the first edition). I've planned a thorough revision of the entire book, working in new examples when appropriate, plus a new section on the implications of the recent "Secret Empire" debacle and a new chapter on Sam Wilson's (ongoing) experience as Cap. (Coincidentally, this arrived today.)

I hope you enjoy the withering embers of summer, in whatever way you can, and the impending crispness of fall, whatever form it takes for you.

This blog's title is, of course, in tribute to this fine singer and actress, gone far too soon.

As summer starts... (A personal update)

With the academic year wrapped up and a long overdue handbook chapter completed, the time has come to switch gears, which also provides an opportunity to post a brief update, also long overdue.

It was a tough semester with a lot of campus drama, most of it unnecessary but none of it surprising. I did, however, change my mind about what I wrote at the end of 2021, for both professional and personal reasons, and offered to continue as department chair for a least a little while longer (which my colleagues all too eagerly took me up on).

With the handbook chapter finally done and the summer laid out ahead of me, I can resume work full-time on my introductory ethics textbook using superhero examples, as well as background reading/re-reading for future titles in the A Philosopher Reads... series, which is now actually a series after the publication in April of the second book, A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Thor: If They Be Worthy. There is already one review online from Armond Boudreaux at A Clash of Heroes, as well as two podcasts I guested on, the first of which is with my old friends Leon and Alen at Seize the Moment:

(Clearly we're all having a miserable time.)

The second is with my new friend, Thor super-fan Ryan Does, at Across the Bifrost:

I have one more podcast for the book planned at this time, and as the new movie approaches I'm sure I'll have more to share.

In other superhero-related news:

• My other blogging activity all but collapsed since the new year began, but I have kept up with my twice-weekly posts at The Virtues of Captain America Blog, which celebrated its 400th post in May.
• I wrote about the latest Batman film here, and was interviewed by the German magazine Cinema ahead of its release (see my tweet with images here).
• The book Black Panther and Philosophy, edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown, was released in January, and it includes my chapter "Panther Virtue: The Many Roles of T’Challa."
• I guested on the Podcast Supreme discussing Doctor Strange: The Oath, the subject of my chapter in Doctor Strange and Philosophy:

• Speaking of Doctor Strange and Philosophy, I learned recently that the Chinese translation has been published, which makes four of my volumes in the Blackwell Philosophy and Popular Culture series that have been translated in Chinese, which blows my mind.

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That's it for this update; we'll see how much I have to report by summer's end.

If you have a chance, I hope you enjoy the next several months, whatever that means for you, and in the meantime I'll see you on Twitter and Instagram, where I post lots of photos like the one at the top of this post, taken yesterday morning from the landing at the top of my back stairs. Here's another, from this morning, just because you made it this far:

My 2021 in review, and looking ahead to 2022...

At the end of this dizzying year, and on the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, I offer my reflections on the last twelve months in terms of work—reflections that, to quote Rick Blaine, "don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world," where matters of much greater importance are going on. <gestures wildly at everything> Nevertheless...

I went into my work frustrations in my update last month, so I won't belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that this is my eleventh and final year as department chair, and I'm very much looking forward to returning to full-time teaching and writing as of next July 1. This year I designed a new introductory/survey course in legal philosophy, and I hope that it, together with the upper-level legal philosophy course I regularly teach—retitled "Jurisprudence" to reflect how I've been teaching it for years—will become part of my regular teaching rotation, along with other courses in philosophy and economics. (I taught law-and-economics this semester for the first time in years and enjoyed it, despite the Zoom setting, and I'm hoping to continue teaching that, and resume the economics-and-philosophy course I introduced 20+ years ago, more regularly going forward.)

Although everything that happened in 2021 made it very difficult to write, I did manage to get more done than last year; what's more, I became more productive as the year progressed, which leaves me cautiously optimistic heading into 2022.

1. I wrote two chapters for edited volumes coming out next year and welcomed the publication of one written last year, for which I thank all the editors who invited me to contribute.

• I wrote "Panther Virtue: The Many Roles of T’Challa” for Black Panther and Philosophy, edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown, coming out in February 2022 from Wiley-Blackwell.
• I also wrote "A Kantian Perspective on Teaching Ethics to Economists" for Handbook of Teaching Ethics to Economists: A Plurality of Perspectives, edited by Craig Duckworth, Ioana Negru, and Imko Meyenburg, coming out from Edward Elgar later in 2022 (I believe).
• My chapter "Reflections on the State of Economics and Ethics" was published last month in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics, edited by Conrad Heinmann and Julian Reiss.

2. I was much more active in what we olds used to call "the blogosphere," especially in the second half of the year:

• In August, I resumed blogging for Psychology Today, including a very widely read post earlier this month on Cecily Whiteley's provocative work on depression as a unique state of consciousness.
• In September, Jonathan Wight and I revived the Economics and Ethics blog, which has since highlighted new developments in the area, usually at least once a week.
• Earlier this month I started blogging at The Comics Professor again on interesting ethics-related content in current superhero comics (and I hope to blog there weekly going forward).
• And all year long I maintained twice-weekly posts at The Virtues of Captain America Blog, which is now halfway through Cap's 1990 appearances after 3½ years of blogging, resulting in 364 posts so far.

3. My signal achievement this year was finishing A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Thor: If They Be Worthy, which will be released in 2022 ahead of next summer's Thor: Love and Thunder film. (UPDATE: It's now available.) It's an exploration of the seven years of Thor comics written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Esad Ribić, Russell Dauterman, and others, in which the original Thor suddenly finds himself unworthy of wielding his mighty hammer Mjolnir, only to see a new Thor emerge, eventually revealed to be Jane Foster, who must struggle with her own unique issues while saving the universe (and dealing with Odin). In this short volume, I use this fascinating tale to discuss the various meanings of worthiness, how it feels to lose it, and how one can reclaim it—which requires a more nuanced and somewhat paradoxical understanding of worthiness, suggested by the comics themselves. (See more about this book here.)

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Thinking ahead to 2022: I look forward to finishing my current book project—an introductory ethics textbook using superhero examples—as well as a handbook chapter on the philosophy of punishment. Then I will pick up work on two other book projects: a long-delayed discussion of antitrust, which is even more relevant these days than when I started it, and a deep dive into the Fant... well, perhaps I should hold off on talking about that for a while.

(Sorry, Ben—got carried away.)

At last, autumn... very late autumn... (A personal update)

I know, it's been six months since my last post, but this is the first day in a long time I've felt upbeat about things in my life. (So I thought I'd better post while it lasts, right?)

Like many people, I've been very overwhelmed the last few months, especially since the fall semester started. (I don't want to get into it, but I nearly quit my job several times the last couple months.) With only a few weeks left in the semester, as meetings become less frequent and classes begin to wrap up, I think I've finally got a handle on things.

In particular, this past weekend—yes, Thanksgiving weekend—I was very productive, getting a lot of things done and off my plate. As a result, everything is finished for my course through the end of the semester; I finally completed a long overdue handbook chapter; and all my outstanding referee reports are in. Now I can look forward to receiving the page proofs of my upcoming book—the one I finished this summer—and to getting back to work on my current book-in-progress, as well as the next handbook chapter (and the books after that). More on these things as they approach completion.

I've also managed to keep up with twice-weekly posts at the Virtues of Captain America blog, as well as returning to semi-regular blogging at Psychology Today as of August and relaunching the Economics and Ethics blog as of September, where I try (not always successfully) to post several times a week about new papers, books, and events relevant to economics and ethics.

The next you'll hear from me (aside from the other blogs and Twitter) should be at the end of the year, after I've turned <gasp> fifty and my second half-century begins. Who knows what's coming on the other side?

Work as a pandemic slowly recedes, maybe (A personal update)

Wow, the first post of 2021—I didn't realize I hadn't posted here yet this year. In some ways, it seems like a different world since my last update/annual wrap-up, with the coronavirus situation slowly improving (at least in the US) and the political situation having changed in some obvious ways, while stubbornly resistant to change in others. Work at the college continues to be "challenging," for some reasons all too familiar and some new ones introduced this past semester just for fun. (At least, someone's twisted idea of "fun.") But summer promises to be at least a partial respite from that, which gives me a chance to update and retool an old course to teach it online in the fall. (My college is cautiously returning to in-person classes, starting with courses that need it, such as labs and art classes, so philosophy will remain online until the spring.)

In terms of writing, I have made some improvements to routine and lifestyle, and I'm pleased to report that my productivity (oops, dirty word) has increased somewhat. I just finished a chapter for the upcoming Black Panther and Philosophy, edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown, and I hope to complete my current superheroes-and-philosophy book project before the middle of summer. After that's done, I begin work on one of two scholarly handbook chapters I've agreed to write in economics and philosophy, and then I start my next book project, also on superheroes and philosophy but quite different in format and approach. (There are also plans afoot to revive the Economics and Ethics blog, which has languished for several years, and it only lasted that long because of the valiant efforts of the blog's co-founder, Jonathan Wight.)

In all this time, the one constant is my working life is The Virtues of Captain America Blog, which reached its 300th at the end of April with the pivotal issue Captain America #321 (September 1986), and is now well into 1987. Earlier this month, I had the pleasure and honor of appearing on the Captain America Comic Book Fans podcast, discussing both my book and blog with two experts in everything Cap, and I hope to make a return visit in a few months.

I'll try to check in at the end of summer or sooner—perhaps when the current book is finished and I'm more comfortable talking about it! I wish everybody a safe and relaxing summer, and you can always check in on me on Twitter for sardonic updates, lame jokes,and retweets of more interesting people, as well as Instagram, where I mainly post pictures of my local park, like the one at the top of this post.

My 2020 in review, and looking ahead to 2021...

Warning: This is gonna be short.

If you read my last two posts (here and here), both titled "Work in a pandemic," there won't be any surprises here. It was more than enough to keep up with teaching* and my duties as department chair during a constant panic mode at my college, while trying to cope emotionally during a worldwide pandemic and national political crisis. Both of these are, I hope, winding down, and we'll see a gradual return to some sense of normalcy in which the number of new cases and lives lost each day start to decline and heart-stopping political news doesn't break around the clock.

* Let me just say here that my students were incredible this semester, despite many of them enduring devastating personal losses and hardships that would test the strongest of us.

Like last year, this year I continued to work on several projects, at various stages of development, without making significant progress on most of them. I am thankful to my patient editors for tolerating this, and I hope to get back on track in the new year. As it happens, this year will be my 50th, having turned 49 yesterday, and it would be welcome for that to provide some motivation to make it a better year than the last two. (Who does anything in their 48th and 49th years anyway, right?)

Through it all, at least I managed to keep up with twice-weekly posts at my Virtues of Captain America blog, which this week covered the last issue of 1984, and will start 1985 issues on New Year's Day. On the other hand, however, I took a break from regular blogging at Psychology Today, at which I last posted in late March (excerpted in the October 2020 issue of the print magazine). Until I have new ideas worthy of posting there, I'm giving it a rest, but hopefully not for long.

So here's to a better, brighter, and calmer year ahead, when we can move ahead with our lives, while remembering those we've lost—and what we've lost—as well as reflecting long and hard on how we got here so it never happens again.

Work during a pandemic, continued... (A personal update)

I had little reason to write this other than that it has been three months since my last post... three dreadfully long and eventful months in the real world, while little seems to have changed in my tiny corner of it (other than my hair). All the things I wrote last time about difficulties focusing on anything when the coronavirus continues to spread around the world—increasingly so in parts of the U.S. the last month—still hold true, but have been magnified since the #BlackLivesMatter protests against police brutality began after the tragic death of George Floyd.

You know all this, of course... but what else to say?

I'll be brief: My productivity is of a pace with that reported in the last post (along with the corresponding malaise for that and many other reasons). I finished or abandoned all of the smaller or shorter things to my to-do list, and am now focused on keeping my Captain America blog current and working on my next superhero-and-ethics book, which ideally will be finished (or close to it) by the end of summer. This one will be a bit different than my Captain America or Batman books: Rather than looking at a character's overall approach to ethics, it will be focused on one particular idea connected with them (and which happens to be very meaningful to me as well). Also, one of the book proposals I mentioned in my last post led to a contract, and I've started planning for that project, with work in earnest to start in the fall. (And I'm awaiting word on the other proposal, the first draft of which I just sent to my editor a week ago.)

Other than that, I'm managing affairs for my college department over the summer, adapting to a constantly changing budget outlook ahead of a precarious fall semester, and updating my course while adapting it for the online format. I did find time to guest on a podcast, Good Is in the Details, hosted by my good friend Gwendolyn Dolske, discussing Batman and ethics, with a follow-up on Captain America coming soon. As always, I'm trying to stay offline more, even though my sense of FOMO is heightened and rationalized by the crucial, historical nature of everything happening at the moment.

I hope you have whatever kind of summer you can manage; try to stay positive and focus on the good; and please, please take care of yourselves and others by wearing a mask when you're out and about. Not all heroes wear masks, but everyone who wears a mask is a hero.

Work during a pandemic... (A personal update)

Well.

I wish I had written one of these a month ago. By the middle of March, my university went online, and now, at the end of March, 75% of Americans are living in some state of lockdown as the numbers of people infected and lost around the world continue to climb. We are all, adults and children alike, expected to continue "work as normal" under conditions that are anything but normal. Although I join those who push back again the emphasis on productivity during a pandemic and emphasize the importance of self-care and compassion... I do nonetheless worry about my own productivity.

Not that I was getting a lot done before all this happened—my malaise from last year had not abated—but I think the constant state of urgency, with more to do as a department chair and more to think about as a human being, has strangely made me more alert to what I need to do as a writer and scholar. Of course, it's much harder to focus when you're trying to absorb the constantly updating news around the world (and here we thought there was a lot of news before the pandemic, ha). But the current crisis also makes it more imperative to unplug and refresh our minds, to focus on something else for at least a short while. (Not all of us can do this, of course, especially the heroes of the day: health care workers, first responders, and grocery store and restaurant employees, among others.)

It seems that, very recently, I have managed to avoid the news cycle—and commentary on the news, and commentary on the commentary, ad infinitum and ad nauseam—which enabled me to recover a bit of my focus and motivation and move some projects forward. Today I sent off a book proposal to an editor who's been patiently waiting for it, and I will continue work on a handbook chapter for another editor who's been even more patient, which I hope will lead to finally completing a related book proposal for yet another editor, whose patience is off the charts. When those things are done, and I get a few review assignments off my desk, I can get back to the superhero-and-ethics book for which I did the reading and note-taking at the end of last year.

In lighter activity, I have managed to keep up with blogging at Psychology Today and The Virtues of Captain America, as well as start an Instagram account, which I've found to be a comforting escape from Twitter (at which I just "celebrated" my tenth anniversary).

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I've found some solace this past month in journaling, which I do off and on and off again (and intermittently at that). But this time around, I've been using it to try to figure out what I want to do, as in "with my life," a nut I've been trying to crack for going on a decade now. Much of it has to do with determining with who I want to be, who I want to think of myself as, and who I want others to think of me as, all of which come back in one way or another to the word worthy (which just happens to be the focus of the book I'm current working on, so that's kind of weird).

I also realized I had came to no longer think of myself of a writer, which was a striking revelation. I've written about why that particular mode of self-identification is problematic for me, but it did serve as an existential anchor of sorts, grounding me in an understanding of what I did with my days. Without it, I just drifted, but I think I've found my footing again, as shown by the reignited embers of work detailed above, and hopefully I'll have more progress to report the next time I check in.

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Until I see you again, please be well and safe, practice social distancing, and do wot the man says...

My 2019 in review, and looking ahead to 2020...

This was a difficult year's-end review to write. 2019 was not a good year for me, neither professionally nor personally, and although I did have a good number of things come out, based on past efforts, I produced very little new material over the last twelve months.

I had two books published this year, Batman and Ethics (Wiley Blackwell) and my edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics (Oxford University Press), and five articles and book chapters:

• “With All Due Respect: A Kantian Approach to Economics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, pp. 54-76
• “More Harm Than Benefit: The Ramifications of the Neglect of Rights in Economics,” in Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru (eds), The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge), pp. 71-91
• “Nudging – Ethical and Political Dimensions of Choice Architectures,” in Holger Strassheim and Silke Beck (eds), Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy (Edward Elgar), pp. 319-331
• “Criminal Justice in Gotham: The Role of the Dark Knight,” in Damien Picariello (ed.), Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 123-140
• “The Neglect of Rights in Law and Economics,” GNLU Journal of Law & Economics, vol. II, pp. 22-39

The final piece above was written this year, as was a book review for a journal and a very short piece on nudge for an online site (both forthcoming next year, perhaps). In terms of blogs, I wrote my usual complement of posts for Psychology Today, including a post based on my Batman book originally posted at The Comics Professor, and kept up with my Virtues of Captain America blog (although my backlog is not what it used to be). Finally, I wrote a nudge paper for a special journal issue that didn't work for the reviewers and a few chapters for the antitrust book I worked on in the spring but set aside (twice), and I finished the background reading for the first of two superhero books I am writing for Ockham Publishing (who published my Civil War book in 2016).

Looking ahead to next year, I plan to write the superhero book mentioned above (and start background work on the second), finalize plans for an academic trade book on economics and ethics (and write an invited handbook chapter on same), and continue to work on the antitrust book (which I've begun to refer to as my "white whale").

It might as well be spring... (A personal update)

It's been a strange year so far in terms of work (both writing and school), so the true updates in this post will be few, and instead I'll focus on things coming out in the near future.

My main project since the beginning of the year has been my antitrust book, but I did not make as much progress on it as I'd hoped, so after some hiccups (and thanks to the patience of my editor), I will be taking the summer to finish it. (Speaking of antitrust, I had the pleasure recently of attending a talk by Jonathan B. Baker, whose new book, The Antitrust Paradigm, I'm eagerly awaiting.) I did, however, manage to write an invited essay for a new law-and-economics journal (tentatively out this fall) and a short book review for another journal, and I have started working on an invited symposium paper on nudge (specifically, proposed ethical guidelines for their use) for a political science journal.

The academic trade book proposal I mentioned in my last post—which would have collected and elaborated on my thoughts about adultery based on my Psychology Today posts on the topic—didn't get picked up, but I plan to write something longer on the topic nonetheless. As far another book in the works, I'll save that until the end...

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I have a few things coming out this year, one of which (as you can see above) showed up on my doorstep the morning of the day before Easter: Batman and Ethics, which is available now as an ebook and will be released in US in paperback in early May (the 6th or the 13th, depending on what site you're looking at), earlier some other places (26 April in the UK, apparently). There is now a dedicated page for it here, which explains what I'm on about, and includes a quote from an early review by Armond Boudreaux at his great blog A Clash of Heroes.

Although I do not yet have a copy in my hands, this summer will see the release of The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, involving several dozen brilliant scholars over 27 chapters (including mine, “With All Due Respect: A Kantian Approach to Economics"), all of which I was honored to edit. I also have a dedicated page for this here, and my introduction is available at SSRN.

I also have several chapters coming out this spring in other people's books:

• Available now is Damien Picariello's edited volume, Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave), including my chapter “Criminal Justice in Gotham: The Role of the Dark Knight."
• Coming at the end of May is Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru's edited volume, The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge), including my chapter “More Harm Than Benefit: The Ramifications of the Neglect of Rights in Economics."
• Also out at the end of May is Holger Strassheim and Silke Beck's Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy (Elgar), including my chapter “Nudging – Ethical and Political Dimensions of Choice Architectures.”

Also out since my last post is “On the Relationship Between Economics and Ethics,” in Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi (available at SSRN), followed in the same issue by a response from John B. Davis, who contributed to the Oxford handbook as well. (Speaking of contributors to the Oxford handbook, Virgil Storr and Ginny Choi have a book coming this summer titled Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? that I strongly encourage you to check out, and which may or may not carry a blurb from yours truly.)

I also had my customary posts at Psychology Today and my ongoing efforts at my blog The Virtues of Captain America, which is steadily approaching its 100th post. And finally, appropriate given the impending release of Avengers: Endgame, I recently found the Chinese edition of The Avengers and Philosophy, which I didn't think was due until 2020 but seems to have appeared early. (Keeping my eye open for the planned Chinese edition of Iron Man and Philosophy too.)

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Going forward, while I wrap up the antitrust book and the nudge paper, I will be starting the "arduous" task of re-reading and note-taking for my next superhero-and-ethics book, a long-term project with no firm completion date (on agreement with the publisher). This will be a true labor of love, and my dream project since I started doing this sort of thing. I'm keeping the details tight to my vest for the time being, but if I do my job right, it should be fantastic.