AustLit

'It is a tradition for the organizers of the annual conference of the Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur (SAES) to choose a topic that will be found doubly relevant, first as conducive to exchanges across the disciplines constitutive of English studies, and second as emblematic of the region where the event is hosted. The 2016 SAES conference took place in Lyon, the city where the mighty Rhône and sedate Saône rivers flow together, at the very tip of the peninsula or “Presqu’île” nestled between the two hills of Fourvière and La Croix Rousse. “Confluence” was therefore the theme proposed to the delegates who met there between June 2 and June 5, 2016. The site’s geography played an essential role in the development of the Roman military camp that became the capital of the Gauls as Lugdunum flourished between the Renaissance and the industrial revolution, and is now the most important educational centre in France after Paris, at least if we are to believe the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It also happens that Lyon is my hometown, the city where I grew up and went to university to study English. It is a rather apt and, to me at least, moving coincidence that my 2011-2017 mandate as general editor of Commonwealth Essays and Studies and president of the Société d’Etude des Pays du Commonwealth (SEPC) should come to an end with the publication of this joint issue for which I have edited six essays. Four of them were presented during the 2016 Confluence conference, but all of them engage with its federating topic on several, complementary levels as shall now be seen.' (Introduction)