This seminar is about wonder. Specifically, we want to explore how wonder might enliven and invigorate our profession in a time of many pressures, if not crises, in higher education. Why wonder? From the ancients, who claimed that philosophy begins in wonder, to contemporary philosophers like William Desmond, who articulates wonder as a primal experience of “astonishment at the too-muchness of being,” wonder has been identified as a starting point from which to think, and therefore—as we might more closely consider—read, write, and teach. 

Inspired in particular by Steven Knepper’s recent monograph Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond (SUNY Press 2022), we hope for an interdisciplinary seminar that brings together philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and religion toward describing a hermeneutic of wonder. Questions we might wonder about include: What is wonder, especially in relation to and distinct from other concepts such as contemplation, recognition, adoration, absorption, curiosity, or stupor? How does wonder happen? What are its conditions, both internal and external? Is wonder a stance, a practice, an experience, a choice, a surprise? What does wonder afford or effect? What sort of ethics might wonder produce? Are there dangers to wonder? What is the role of wonder in the reading, teaching, and study of literature? 

Papers that engage with these questions are welcome from any discipline, theoretical framework, or methodology. Topics might include but are not limited to:

the phenomenology and/or philosophy of wonder

literary representations of wonder 

wonder in the classroom 

wonder as critical methodology

wonder and poetry/poetics

wonder and specific genres (magical realism, fairy tales, travel writing, etc.)

wonder and specific periods (e.g. Romanticism)