Change is a powerful idea which inspires hope and fear, excitement and dread. From the panta rhei of Heraclitus to Darwinian evolutionary theory, nobel laureate Bob Dylan's The times they are a-changin', the Obama campaign slogan Change we can believe in, and the current advertising mantra 'change is good', it recurs as a challenge to the status quo. The present volume contains essays on the topic of change in English language, literature and culture. Some are based on papers presented at the 2017 SAUTE conference, which took place at the Université de Neuchâtel, while others have been specially written for this volume.

This volume explores practices of secrecy and surveillance in medieval and early modern England. The ten contributions by Swiss and international scholars address in particular the intersections of secrecy and surveillance with gender and identity, public and private spheres, religious practices, and power structures. Considering a wide range of English literary texts from Old English riddles to the Book of Margery Kempe and the plays and poems of Shakespeare, they seek to contribute to the much-needed historicisation of the practices of secrecy, exclusion and disclosure.

This volume explores the cultural significance of Brexit, situating it in debates about nation and identity. Contributors to this collection seek to contextualise Britain's decision to leave the EU and to assess its reverberations in language, literature and culture. Addressing such aspects as British exceptionalism, myth making, medievalism and nostalgia, contributions range from travelogues, ladybird books and rural cinema going to ageing. An important focus lies on marginalised groups and geographical fringes as contributors attend to the Irish situation and the "dearth of literary representation of EU migrants" (Berberich). Finally, two essays widen the perspective to assess American parallels to the discourses about a Brexit that is still far from "done."

Performing the Self offers a cross-disciplinary dialogue about fundamental issues related to identity construction and identity performance. Written by linguistic and literary scholars, the present collection of essays argues against an essentialist view of the self and demonstrates in various ways how identities– whether they are defined as national, sexual, gendered, cultural, professional, virtual, linguistic or in some other way personal– are the products of multiple constructions and interconnected performances. Indeed, ‘performing the self’ is shown to be an act ofconstant questioning and staging, a relentless process which one perpetually revises and readjusts.