This panel seeks papers for the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting (February 19–21, 2026, San Franscico, California). It explores an overlooked poetic genre: the prefatory poem of the early printed book for the It considers such appendages as simultaneously occupying the niches of text and paratext: discrete units which both conform to the structural and aesthetic constraints of poetry and adorn a corresponding, substantive text. These poems are at once ubiquitous and neglected, appearing in books of nearly all genres: from the luxury atlas to the sailing manual; from the personal devotional to the folio Bible; from the illustrated epic poem to the clinical legal handbook. This breadth invites us to ask not only how paratext shapes a reader’s encounter with a text, but also how texts reflect on and reframe one another. The prefatory poem frequently offers a bibliographical one-off, bound to both a single text and often a single edition of that text. But what are the literary and book-historical payoffs of treating prefatory poems as objects of serious study?

This panel seeks papers on any aspect of the prefatory poem, approached through literary, rhetorical, bibliographical, critical, or other disciplinary lenses. As a genre that attaches itself to texts across fields, the prefatory poem demands an interdisciplinary approach, which this panel adopts as a guiding principle. Case studies are welcome, as are papers that ponder the prefatory poem in a broader book-historical or theoretical context.

The panel will be sponsored by the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies. Please note that submitting an abstract constitutes a commitment to attend the conference in person.

Please submit a paper title (15-word maximum), abstract (200-word maximum), C.V. (Word or PDF), and PhD or other terminal degree completion date (past or expected) to Hayley Cotter hcotter@umass.edu by Tuesday, July 1, 2025. Accepted papers will be notified no later than Monday, July 7.