The experience of Wonder eludes words. In academic circles it is usually discussed under the banner of philosophy or theology, which comes as no surprise. Wonder is more a feeling than a thought; it arrives unexpected, compels us by its immediacy, and soon moves on, leaving us changed. In the experience of Wonder the distinction between subject and object is temporarily suspended, while the encounter itself seems to unfold in silence, outside of time and history. In that encounter, we are transported from memory, from reason, and even from desire. Conceptual categories dissolve; without them, and removed from ordinary consciousness of space and time, we have no historical perspective from which to speak, no means to represent the experience. Only afterwards can we "make sense" of the Wonder-encounter. But we cannot predict with certainty what that "sense" will be.

In that shift between silence and sense we can begin to locate the effort of this Symposium. If Wonder seems to reside in timelessness, it also has been an engine of worldly thought and action, the "beginning of philosophy" that has both compelled conformity and sparked revolution. Wonder, in short, has its uses. How, for example, have cultural spectacles been designed to trigger this moment of non-reflexive perception, such that the individual subject is in effect softened, petitioned, interpellated into a broader ideological field? And conversely, how has Wonder been employed in the service of dissent, as a poetic means to destabilize the logic of power? When, and under what historical conditions, does Wonder become a salient cultural feature, central to the ordinary discourses of exploration, education, expression and entertainment? Please join us as noted scholars share their work that addresses such matters in complex, beautiful and sometimes terrifying ways.

Michigan has been included among the venues for this fall's launch of the Forsyth Lecture series, a program sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art (New York). The series will present lectures by distinguished scholars at multiple venues within the international scope of the Center. At this inaugural series, Jannic Durand, Conservateur (Curator) in the D�partment des Objets d'art at the Louvre and an acclaimed expert on Byzantine art, will deliver a talk dealing with his research on Byzantine reliquaries.

The concept of ephemerality has come to evoke a broad range of associations, from the transience of individuals, objects, and events, to the complexities of memory, transformation, displacement, replacement, and restoration. This symposium seeks to provide a forum for exploring how ephemerality relates not only to the work of art itself, but also to the larger nexus of medium, artistic practice, viewership, community, the market, and institutional frameworks. Keynote speaker is James Meyer, Winship Distinguished Associate Professor in the Art History Department at Emory University.