University of Strasbourg, France, 16-17 March, 2012.

This international conference, organised by the University of Strasbourg's Research Group in Anglophone Literature and Culture (EA 2325 SEARCH), is a follow up to its successful March 2010 conference “Reprise, recycling, recuperating: the déjà-vu and the authentic in Anglophone literature and culture.”

The 16-17 March 2012 conference will focus on dissonance and discordance. The musical metaphor can provide a way to apprehend contacts, frictions, clashes in representations of Anglophone literature and culture. Is it not the dynamics of disharmony that provides the impetus to build culture? Are not frictions and clashes inherent in historical change? For a new authenticity to emerge from the déjà-vu, are not chafing, jarring and resistance inevitable?

We welcome papers in the domains of literature, civilisation, history of art, cultural history and expect a broad range of theoretical and conceptual approaches.