A Call for Papers

For a panel at the second SMU Symposium on Poetic Form

To be held at SMU in Dallas on February 23 and 24, 2026

On Rhyme

I welcome papers on rhyme’s possibilities, problems, and pleasures: rhyme as jingle, bondage, or boundary, as childish mnemonic, syntactical connection, or philosophical relation, as Gothic remnant, orientalist import, or cutting-edge embodied art. How has rhyme been attacked or defended? What changes when it’s “feminine” or “royal,” slant or internal, or rhyme only to the eye, and so on? What can we learn from long histories of theorizing and using rhyme, and what might these histories have to offer us today? I am particularly keen to feature papers that engage with rhyming practices before 1800. Submit short abstracts to Courtney Weiss Smith (csmith03@wesleyan.edu) by April 25.