The centrality and the ambiguity of ritual, routine, and regime in many aspects of early modern British, American, and Continental cultures will be investigated. What does repetition-at once the act and instance of repeating-indicate about constructions of agency and authority during the long eighteenth century in Euro-American cultures? In early modern contexts, there emerged a number of alternate, competing, or even incongruous perspectives on the value of repetition. Both an imperative and an increasingly devalued strategy in early modern life, repetition could be understood as an attempt to impose continuity on disparities, or as an effort to come to terms with difference located within sameness. Imitation in a Neoclassical context was viewed simultaneously as recapitulation and creation. While a relatively new scientific method derived its authority from the replicability of experiments, the proof of creative authority shifted from effective imitation, or translation of the past, to the production of an ostensible original. The issue of repetition also in part provoked the ancient and modern controversy: should a nation reiterate another era or move ahead into a modernity that self-consciously separates itself from a past? In another emergent arena, national identities can be seen as formulated through repetition to become regime, either at institutionalized levels or as the incorporation of individual values that are attributed to national character and habit. This conference seeks, not only to address contested meanings given to repetition in early modern Euro-American cultures, but also to explore possible negotiations between early modern practices and twentieth-century accounts of the institutions of repetition.